


Genesis

by hubblegleeflower



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Becoming Entangled In The Affairs Of Humans, But we live in hope., Crowley Whump, F/M, Human/Demon Sex, Lots of chapters with a gen rating, Lots of sex with people who aren't Aziraphale, M/M, Other, Politics, There's been no smut for a few centuries actually, Tw hunting, Tw trapping, but also (hopefully) eventually with Aziraphale as well, fully consensual, internalized demonphobia, mass murder(Flood)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2020-06-30 06:32:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19847518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblegleeflower/pseuds/hubblegleeflower
Summary: Oh, humans.Humansnow. Endlessly surprising. Crowley tempts them to evil thoughts and acts, andsometimes they say no. He loves that. They're horrible and violent and petty and sickeningly imaginative when it comes to spreading pain and death among their fellows, and also devastatingly tender, and generous, and capable of the most exquisite acts of grace. When they use their bodies to extend that grace to Crowley, he takes it. Of course he takes it. He's thirsty for it, for those few drops in the desert. Brief, yes. Fleeting, yes. But more grace than a demon has any right to expect.It isn't possible, after all, for Crowley to do good. He's a demon. That's been clearly explained to him by the angel who is the only other immortal who spends any time at all on earth. Aziraphale has made it clear that he can't or won't forget exactly what Crowley is. Crowley judges himself harshly enough without that kind of 'help'.The best path, theonlypath, is for him to remain alone. Or take his chances with the humans.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose...and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown_ Genesis 6:1-2,4

"It must _be_ bad,” the angel had said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be involved. I’m not sure it’s actually possible for you to do good.”

The angel who said it had given away his flaming sword to the helpless humans, and had sheltered him with a wing, even though Crowey had wings of his own, and even though it was (arguably) his fault that it was raining at all. Crowley didn’t know of any other angels who would do that. If Crowley were any good at all, surely this is the angel who would have known it.

But he’d said it very clearly: Goodness was impossible for Crowley.

He hadn’t even meant to do anything too terrible. He’d been asked to make trouble, sure, but he hadn’t expected anyone to actually get _hurt_. And really, the tree was smack in the middle of the garden; it was _right there_. Crowley hadn’t even had to be _creative_ about it, he’d just gone for the, er, low hanging fruit. So to speak. Surely a temptation that obvious (and that easy to avoid, let’s be honest) couldn’t carry any far-reaching consequences. That wouldn’t be _fair._ To punish them for _that?_ Crowley had his differences with God, no denying, but surely God wouldn’t do _that_.

The humans weren’t the only ones who had their eyes opened that day.

The angel had sheltered him from the storm, even knowing what he was. They’d watched the humans trudge off into the storm, but when, in the distance, they vanished, so did Crowley.

He’d thought it might do them some good, that knowledge. Knowledge of good and evil. Maybe he should have eaten some himself.

***

When he’d fallen, he’d been with his brothers. They came with their own issues, admittedly, but there was a certain comfort to knowing they were there. Here in the world, though, he had no one.

Except the humans. He couldn’t seem to stay away from _them._

“What do you want?” The man stood away from the tents, stopping Crowley’s approach.

The hostility was nothing he hadn’t heard before. “I am a traveller.”

“Then keep travelling, stranger.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “We have troubles enough of our own.”

Fair enough, too. If you showed hospitality to strangers, who knows what manner of thing you might invite into your tent unawares? It wasn’t that they could tell he was a demon. He told himself he would have been just as alone as the human man they took him for. He almost believed it.

No, the men could never tell that he was a demon. The women could, though.

***

The first time it happened, it was a shock. He’d been sent away from the tent but was lingering under an almond tree near the watering hole. He’d been barred from the camp, as usual. He could head back out into the desert but it was very quiet there. If he sat here, under this tree, near the water but not _too_ near, he could pretend he belonged.

“I heard my father bid you begone, demon.”

He looked up. There was a woman at the well, alone (which was unusual) and gazing at him, unafraid. Her face held a challenge.

He met her eyes. “I am a stranger, sister,” he said. “Your father cast me out to protect you.”

“You are strange indeed,” she said, laughing. _Laughing_. As though he were not a being of pure evil. “But I think, if you meant us harm, barring your way would not save us.”

“I mean you no harm,” he told her. “But if you stay near me, harm might come to you anyway.”

At that, she gave him a long look, and then turned her back to fill her jug. Turned her back. “I am not afraid of you, demon.”

He watched her, bending to her task. Watched her hands grip the handles of her clay pitcher, the tendons playing across her wrists, and watched her draw the vessel upright again with the strength of her legs and her back. Watched her set the full jug down upon the stones, and straighten for a moment to push her hair back from her face with her wet hands. There were already many things in the world that Crowley thought were beautiful...and _oh_ , this woman was beautiful. Laughing at demons and turning her scornful back on them. Strong, bringing water for her family. Beautiful.

In another moment, she would heft the water up onto her shoulder or her head, and leave. He would let her, too. He wouldn’t stop her. He’d send her on her way, for her own good. In just another moment; he hadn’t heard a friendly voice in half a thousand years.

He said, “I do not wish to make you afraid of me, sister.”

She said, “I am not your sister, demon.”

Leaving her jug, she took a step toward him. And another, holding his eyes all the while. _His eyes_. He had no way to hide them. But the woman met them boldly.

She took another step and Crowley thought, desperately, that he might flee. _Better for her if you do._ She was so lovely, and there was no good that Crowley could do her. There was no good that Crowley could do.

She stopped in front of him. “You look frightened, demon.” Her voice was soft. “Men are not usually frightened of women.”

“I am not a man, sister.” He could hear the tremor in his own voice. _Send her away,_ he told himself. _Do it now._ “And you do frighten me.” He cursed the tree at his back that blocked his escape. Cursed or blessed—which was it? He could see her breath from where he stood, and the way it moved in her body. He could look deep into her fearless eyes. He did not feel like he could move.

“You look like a man,” she said, letting her eye wander over his face and down to his chest. “Some of your parts are like a man’s.” There was a glint in her eye. He’d been alone for _so long._ He let his breath out in a long, slow sigh. He tried to keep it silent, but she felt it, and smiled. There was warmth in her smile, and heat. And also pity, but Crowley took it gladly enough. His parched soul welcomed it all.

It took some time for her gaze to wander back up to his face. “I think you could do me some good, demon or not.”

When she put her hand on his jaw he was done for. How did they do this, these humans, these women? How did they offer such, such _tenderness?_ No thought for good or evil, just a… kindness. A kindness of the body. He leaned into her hand and closed his eyes.

“I am a demon.” He made one last attempt to warn her. “It is not actually possible for me to do good.”

“All right, then.” He heard the humour in her voice. “So long as you do _well,_ demon, I will take the chance.”

She kissed him. Her mouth was salt and honey and fresh water from a well. He cursed himself and took his fill.

***

Oh, but they were fair, these daughters of men! Crowley took to haunting the wells and springs of the camps he approached when the silence of the desert rang too loudly in his ears. He wanted only to see more of the people going to and fro, and watch them. Only to watch them, he told himself, the better to tempt them, secure their souls. But he did not haunt the tents, or the roads between camps, only the wells. Fetching the water was the work of women. Even he could see where his true interest lay.

They saw him. He let them see him, and they saw. Sometimes they only watched him, and exchanged glances with their sisters, and cousins, and their brothers’ wives. Sometimes they stared; stared _back_ , he had to say, since he was staring too, and looked at him so steadily that he was ashamed, and slunk away. Sometimes they called out greetings, which he returned. Sometimes they mocked him from afar, and he laughed along with him, from a distance.

He never approached them. It was the one concession he made to the clamour of his conscience, to leave them alone. He always waited for them to come to him. Often they didn’t. Sometimes they did.

It was only a matter of time before it happened again:

“You’re a silent one.”

He looked up to see the speaker, and almost groaned.

She was brown skinned and luminous, unheeding of the danger she was in. Her hair was a cloud of curls atop her head, rising high, unbound by braids or fastenings. He thought, distantly, that such a crown of hair would resist all attempts to tie it down, and that she herself must be equally immune to fetters. _Poetry and fancy,_ he scolded himself. _Her hair is not a metaphor._

He must have been silent for quite some time, taking in her beauty and not speaking, for she made an impatient noise in her throat and said, “Well? Have you a tongue, demon?”

He was startled, or he might not have said it. “Aye, sister. I have two.”

Her eyes widened at that, and he was sorry he’d said it; he couldn’t hide his eyes, but he didn’t have to boast about the tongues, which were even more alarming.

He must have misread her alarm, though. Some time later, when she opened herself to him and he worked both tendrils of his forked tongue through her folds and into the grooves on either side of her clitoris, wrapping it around from both sides and flicking over the tight, plump flesh, and she cried out and pressed herself into his mouth, he thought perhaps there was some benefit to be had from this mark of his fallen nature. He used his tongue to draw the small organ into his mouth and _sucked_ until she howled, and let her waters wash over his hands where she pressed her thighs into his palms.

Afterwards, she smiled at him, spent and spread on the rug of the tent he’d created for her, utterly unashamed and satisfied, reached for his wrist and drew his hand down into the damp springy curls between her legs so he could feel the twitches of the places his tongue and mouth had kissed and sucked into pleasure. Let him feel her arousal subside, in the aftermath. Somehow, the gesture seemed intimate in an entirely different way. _Another kindness_ , he thought, delicately cupping his palm. Offered without fear, almost without thought.

***

Crowley had never bothered to extend his resemblance to a man any further than strictly necessary to go unremarked on the fringes of humanity. He had a mouth and a tongue and clever hands, which seemed to be all these women wanted from him. It took him by surprise, one day, when one practical woman reached between his thighs—and pulled up abruptly.

“How is it that you have no member, demon?” She wasn’t pulling away, but she was disconcerted, he could tell. Not by the yellow snake’s eyes or the forked tongue, but by the lack of a man’s genitals.

“You’ve just said it,” he told her patiently. “I am a demon. I am not a man.”

“Have you no sex, then?”

“None.”

“Is that by choice—did you choose this form—or are you unable?”

“I hope I am able enough where it matters,” he said with a smile. He liked her. Well, of course, he liked them all, these women with their widely varied kindnesses. But he liked this one’s questions, liked that she had reached for him to give him pleasure, as so few of the others did. Liked that she thought nothing now of delaying her own pleasure, if it meant discovering something new.

But to her question: “I may well be unable, I don’t know. I have never tried.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Try now,” she urged him.

He loved to give them what they asked of him. Perhaps he could do something like good, if he was merely fulfilling the requests of someone who was not a demon. At any rate, she looked so eager that he readily agreed, and concentrated for a moment, and lo, within a heartbeat he had a penis—and an erection.

She gave a squeal of delight and took up his new prick in her hands, squeezing a little, dragging the sensitive skin up over his glans, already slick. The sensual movement drew a shocked groan from Crowley’s throat. He hadn’t known it would feel like this.

“You liked this, demon? You’ve never had a woman hold your cock before?”

“I’ve never had a cock before,” he said, already breathless. “What else can it do?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, her eyes aglow with promise, and before he could speak, she pushed him down onto the rug they lay on, and threw a leg across his hips.

The feeling of her, then, sinking down on the prick he hadn’t even had a minute before, was better than any garden, any fruit. The warmth of her, warm and wet, the pleasure unrelenting and...soft? Soft _and_ unrelenting, was that possible? And then the smooth flesh of her thighs, holding him in, holding him down. It was so...human. _Human and holy._ Wait. He was not thinking properly.

And how could he think properly, now, welcomed as he was into her very body, he who had not been welcomed anywhere since before there was even a garden? He could do little more than gaze at her, where she moved above him, gaze at her in awe, at the ripple of her flesh as she moved, the sway of her breasts, the working of her hips and her shoulders. He lay staring, his lips parted, his mouth trying vainly to curl into a soft smile, but only managing to tremble around his shaking breath.

“You look—like you—have never seen a woman.” Her breath, too, was coming quickly.

“Not like this,” he managed. “You are the first.”

At last he forced some movement into his body, lifted his hands to grasp her thighs, and tilted his hips so that his pubic bone gave her what she needed. She cried out then, and bent forward to rest her hands on his shoulders, riding him hard and fast, her clitoris—he could feel how it had swelled and hardened—grinding into him with every pass, her body writhing on his cock, pushing him this way and that, so that all he could do was just _hold on_ , but then— _oh_ —her body went rigid, her flesh clenched tight around him, and she came all over his belly and thighs, like the holy river out of Eden, and he was _amazed,_ astonished, to feel the heat of her, the wetness, the proof of her pleasure, shared so freely, that for another breath or two he thought she was the only one coming, but then his own body bucked, and his pelvis rocked up and into her, and he thought distantly that part of his soul must have been drawn up into her belly. That’s what it felt like.

They were quiet together, then. She lowered herself down to rest upon his chest, and he put his hands on her back and held her there. No need to speed the end.

When their heartbeats had settled somewhat, she said, “Do you like your new prick, then?”

He laughed softly. “Yes, I like it. Thank you; it was a good idea.” Then he said, “You are kind to offer such pleasure, and to a demon.”

She raised her head to look at him, and her smile shifted, took on a tinge of sadness. She asked, “Are there any others like you, demon? Are you quite alone?”

Because humans always saw a little more than you wanted them to.

“Enough questions.” He turned and reached into the corner of their shelter for her robe. He took it up, and brought it to her. Knelt on the rug before her and wrapped her into the sturdy garment until she was tidy and presentable. He could have magicked it back onto her, but he wanted to repay her for the care she had taken with him.

“I would like to give you something,” he said, when she was leaving. “I don’t know what you might want.”

She thought for a moment. “How powerful are you?”

“Very powerful, sister.” He wondered why he sounded almost apologetic when he said it.

“Then I would ask protection for my children, all the children I will ever have, the sons as well as the daughters. It is a dangerous world.”

Crowley knew this only too well. “It is done, lady. For whatever a blessing from a demon may be worth.”

“And I would ask that you come and see me,” she added. “If you should pass this way again.”

 _Why would she want that?_ “If I do, it will not be for a long time.”

“Come and see me. I can find a cool drink and some figs for a friend, however old I may be.”

 _Friend,_ she called him. He wished he could extend his protection to all of her descendants as well. He would try, but it was a dangerous world.

***

Crowley never quite knew what would make a woman approach him, but he tried to make it worth their while once they did. He’d long since stopped trying to talk himself out of this, out of accepting whatever they offered him. They liked his hands well enough, and his mouth, and his forked tongue, and the way he let them place him, and make demands, and have him however they wanted him. They liked the way he liked them, Crowley thought.

He sometimes saw the way their men spoke to them. The women never told him about husbands or children, and he never asked. Presumably they had them; this world was harsh to humans, and tribes needed new members aplenty to replace the ones that died. He did not know if the men they lay with cared for them, or if they cared for the men. There was nothing Crowley could do about that one way or another. The Almighty had decreed that their existence would be thorns and thistles and painful labour and brutal desire, for their shame, for their sin. Mind you, the Almighty had also decreed enmity between women and serpents, and Crowley flattered himself he slipped a little nuance into that hostility with the women who welcomed him with their bodies.

Crowly couldn’t fathom sharing a tent or a camp with these women and seeing them every day, and yet not actually seeing them at all. So he did that, he saw them; something else they liked from him.

The women didn’t always ask for his member, even now that he had one to offer. He supposed it wasn’t too surprising; this was one thing they could get from human men. One thing that perhaps they were happy enough to be rid of, for once.

Sometimes, though, some curious woman would reach for him, for that part of him, and take him into her body. He loved that. He loved it as much as he loved giving them his mouth, or curling his fingers into their body, or wrapping his forked tongue lightly around a pricked nipple, or any one of a thousand other ways of making them arch and call out in their ecstasy.

He left them flushed and warm and lax with their pleasure, and they bid him farewell and did not ask him to stay. So he’d leave, and keep away until the torment of his solitude overwhelmed him, and he went looking for a tent settlement, and a place to ease his thirst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far! And a HUGE thank you to [siemejay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siemejay/profile) for support and enthusiasm and a keen beta eye. <3
> 
> There are a few bible references scattered throughout the text, apart from the one quoted at the beginning. One is Hebrews 13:2: _Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares._  
>  Another is Genesis 3, where God says: _And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel._
> 
> Most of the time, when I quote the bible, I use the King James Version, which by every account is an absolutely terrible rendering of what the original texts actually say, but it's _so pretty_. 
> 
> This is not a finished work, but I'm several chapters ahead so I'm hoping to keep up a pretty regular posting schedule of at least one chapter a week. I've never committed to anything like that before, though, so I reserve the right to delete this statement at any time. Also, the final posted chapter count is a wild guess.
> 
> Edit: HAHAHAHA I take it all back! It's now October and my last chapter has been posted for weeks and the next one is barely half written and anything like a posting schedule feels like a fever dream from a bygone age. It was a nice notion while it lasted.  
> I'm definitely finishing this. Just not quickly. Thank you for (hopefully) sticking around!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley began, at a certain point, to notice the children. In particular, there were a few among them, in every place he circled back to, who were… different. Taller, sometimes, but healthier, always. Strong and able, leaders among the children. Leaders even among their elders. And yet still humble, somehow. He could see them growing to be women and men of renown.  
> He saw them, and thought, “They have come so far, these humans, since being two scared innocents in the wilderness, with nothing but a flaming sword and the knowledge of good and evil.” He thought, “Perhaps they will be all right after all.”  
> Crowley and the world were still young, and had much to learn.

Crowley spent long stretches of time in the desert. There were no other demons abroad in the world, he didn’t think. They preferred their Hell to this world of humans; by the time the humans came to Hell, the demons already owned them. They weren’t very interesting then.

Crowley had a purpose, of course: _make trouble_. He quickly discovered that the trouble he could make paled next to what the humans made up for themselves. He tempted them, with wealth or glory or bodily pleasures, mainly for the sport of seeing when they would resist. Mostly they didn’t, but the wonder of it was that _sometimes they did._ He was almost glad when they resisted. No, he _was_ glad. He liked to see them say no. He never knew when it would happen; they were surprising creatures.

***

They’d warned him that there was an angel still on earth.

“A dangerous Adversary: The Angel of the Eastern Gate,” Hastur had snarled. “He’s called Aziraphale.”

 _Aziraphale._ Aziraphale, who’d given away his flaming sword. _He was still here._ “Even with no garden to defend?”

“Even so,” Hastur responded. “Heaven is ever vigilant.”

Crowley had his own thoughts about that. His orders were vague but imperative: _be wary, be watchful, be wily. And if you find the Adversary, thwart him at every turn. Send him running back to Heaven. Teach him that humans are already doomed, and only demons and devils belong here. And, if possible, destroy him._

Destroy him. The angel with his anxious smile who’d forgotten himself and spoken to Crowley like a...like a _friend._ For a brief moment, anyway.

What Crowley remembered most about Aziraphale was his _worry_ , his uncertainty. His _doubt_. Crowley should have been delighted: an angel, there at the beginning of the world, _doubting._ But the angel had sheltered him with his wing, despite his doubt. None of Crowley’s own brothers would have done that, much less any of those who had not Fallen.

No one in Heaven ever offered kindness. The angel was alone in that. Crowley would watch for him as he was ordered. He hadn’t been ordered to _find_ him though, and the world was wide. One demon in the desert might never see another soul unless he chose to. He returned to the wilds.

***

While Crowley drifted with the sands, time passed among the humans, and they grew older. Each time he returned to their camps, he’d been away long enough that he could see the changes. Camps got bigger, and some turned into villages, if they were close to enough water. There were craftspeople now, and healers, and philosophers, and people who had begun to ask questions about their world. Crowley liked that.

There were differences in the people, too. Not all of them. But Crowley began, at a certain point, to notice the children. In particular, there were a few among them, in every place he circled back to, who were… different. Taller, sometimes, but healthier, always. Strong and able, leaders among the children. Leaders even among their elders. And yet still humble, somehow. He could see them growing to be women and men of renown.

He saw them, and thought, “They have come so far, these humans, since being two scared innocents in the wilderness, with nothing but a flaming sword and the knowledge of good and evil.” He thought, “Perhaps they will be all right after all.”

He liked to watch them, the children. He took pleasure in how profoundly themselves they were. Not only the ones who stood out, either; all of them. But his eyes lingered longest on those few, upright and graceful and clever. Something about them called to him, even then.

The world of humans was still small, and even with his periodic sojourns in the desert, within a few years—no more than twenty or thirty—he returned to the places he’d visited before. Sometimes he even saw the same women. Some knew him, some didn’t. Some approached him again, and he received them gladly.

Only one had ever called him _friend_ , though. When he was back in her village, he went in search of her.

Years had passed, but she was not changed. Still the same glint in her eyes, still the same curiosity, and now there was wisdom in her face as well, from a life lived asking questions. As promised, she found him some fruit, and a cool drink, and they sat in the shade awhile. Her husband was dead; there was no one to object.

“You gave me a gift when you left me, demon.”

“I did, and here is another: my name. It is Crowley.”

She smiled. “And I am Saris,” she said.

As if giving away one’s name to a demon out of the desert were nothing to her. As if she really meant it when she called him a friend. Crowley knew very well that he couldn’t be anyone’s friend. But Saris was wise, and she welcomed him, and gave him her name. It was, it was… he did not understand it.

Heedless of Crowley’s consternation, she continued: “But you gave me another gift as well, one I didn’t ask for, the greatest blessing of them all.”

Crowley shook himself, and looked at her. “What gift?”

She pointed across the compound, to where a woman sat with two children, preparing… some kind of fruit, Crowley couldn’t see. Fresh almonds, maybe. The woman was young, and her hands were quick. Her children followed her movements avidly, clumsily trying to match her in her task. All three seemed as though they were softly lit from within. They were not, that was pure fancy, but as he watched, Crowley recognized that nameless quality he’d been seeing in the children of the camps and villages. He did not know what it meant.

He looked back at Saris, frowning. “I don’t understand.”

“No? Then look there.” And she pointed, again, this time in the other direction, where a young man—perhaps the same age as the woman with the almonds—was playing with a very small girl, throwing her up in the air and catching her again, swinging her around, laughing at her delighted squeals. He was strong and steady, his hands sure and his eyes kind. Both he and the child almost glowed with health and intelligence and energy. Just like the three across the way.

“The young people of your camp are lovely,” he said, still not understanding.

“And none as lovely as those,” she agreed. “The man and the woman are my children, twins. They have always stood out from others. They have always caught the eye. They are strong and full of energy, and they make everyone around them want to follow, want to be near them. And yet no envy or ill-will has fallen on them, though well it might. No, they are beloved by all, and always have been. They have been the joy of my life.”

“I am glad of it,” Crowley said. Well, he was. “They are splendid indeed.” He was still missing something, though.

Saris made a noise of frustration. She said, “You begot them.”

Crowley felt his heart turn grey and pale. He looked at the beautiful children and he could no longer see their light, now that he knew what they were. It was false, their glow, it was glamour, and he’d been taken in, but he must guard himself better and not be fooled.

And oh, was that—? Was that what the others had in common, the ones from all the places he had visited, the ones he had noticed and admired? It was not their beauty, their dignity, their excellence that had caught his eye, as he had thought, but only the reflection of his own corruption.

The weight of the cup in his hand made his whole body sag. He was sick, _sick_ at the thought of all the harm he had done. He hadn’t thought, he’d never thought he could beget children. _Stupid_ , he spat at himself. What was a cock for, after all?

“Demon spawn,” he said bitterly. “I wonder that you let them live.” And his mouth twisted, and if he were not a demon he would have wept.

But Saris sat up straight and looked at him sharply. “The demon that begot them never did me any harm. He was civil and gentle and only tried to please me.” She wrapped her hands around his, where he held his cup, steadying him.

He wanted to flee, but she made him meet her eye. Said, insistently, “He could have burned the whole camp when he was turned away, burned it to the ground, and turned all who dwelt within it to little mounds and pillars of salt, if he had chosen. Of that I have no doubt, but instead he offered me caresses and delight, and changed his very body when I asked.”

“Demon all the same,” he said. “What good can one do, when one is made of evil?”

“I do not know,” she said, then added firmly, “Nor have I ever met such a one. What do I care what someone is _made of_ , if it is not reflected by what they do? I cannot say if you are made of evil, friend. But you did me great good, that day and on every day since.”

He searched her face. Saris was his friend, and she was wise and good, and she wouldn’t lie to him. He wanted to believe her.

“ _Look_ at them, you stupid demon. They are alight, they are radiant. Do you not see? They are divine.”

“Don’t say that, I am a _demon_.” He had to make her understand. “I was an angel, I have sinned, and I am a demon. There is nothing divine about me.”

But Saris was unperturbed by his revulsion. “My knowledge does not extend further than this camp,” she said, peaceably. “But I know a blessing when I see one, and those children have blessed my life and the lives of everyone near them. And their children have already begun to do the same, and whatever your sin was, _Crowley_ , it has not tainted your children, or your grandchildren.”

 _My children_. Somehow this silenced Crowley, of everything he had heard that day.

At last he said, stubbornly, “Only God can forgive sins.”

“God can forgive sins against God. I am well able to offer my own forgiveness, when I choose, to those who have sinned against me. And I tell you, friend Crowley, that what you gave me was a gift, and not a sin, and I bless you every day for it. And shall continue to bless you, and your name, now that I know it.”

 _She’s wrong, she must be wrong_ , Crowley thought, but she spoke with such conviction that he could almost put his faith in her. Perhaps she _was_ wrong. But she believed it, she believed it with her whole soul, that was clear. Maybe that was enough.

And so all he could do is marvel at her goodness, once again, at her readiness to accept him on his own merits (as she perceived them) regardless of everything she knew about demons out of the desert who visited women in their beds. Her generosity shone out of every part of her.

Letting the matter drop, Crowley said, “You did me great kindness too, fr—friend. And another one today, in your blessing, which I don’t deserve but can only accept, with my thanks. And you have not grown any less beautiful.”

She laughed then. “No man has touched my body since my husband died, and I haven’t missed them.”

“I am not a man,” he reminded her. “If you want me, I am here.” _Please say yes._ “I would like to, if you want me,” he said. “I would like to very much.” And he felt the truth of his words in his body, as he spoke them, in that part of him that came from her.

It was always what he craved, the peculiar companionship of bodies embracing. He had never experienced it with a _friend_ before.

Still, he made no move towards her, but only waited for her to come to him. He thought she would, and she did. They moved into the tent together, Crowley lightly shielding their intention from view or notice.

Once inside, she let her clothes fall to the carpet, and he saw her body. He remembered how she had felt under his hands all those years ago—not so many years, for an immortal—and he marvelled at the changes in her, at the softness of her belly, at the marks left by bearing children, at the cool, light feel of her skin. Her _skin,_ it was loose now, and hung in folds at her neck and under her arms, and he could put his face to those places and press his mouth to them, and taste them with his tongue. He put his mouth to other places, too, and his hands, and he put some slither into the movement of his arms, so that without him quite being a snake, still, he could wrap around her, and slide over her body, and twist and spiral and caress, and touch her in many places all at once. And she did not arch and gush and cry out as she had when she was young, but rather sighed, and settled into the coil of his embrace, and laid herself open to the questing glide of his limbs around and inside her body, and at last let out a high, soft moan on a long exhale and _melted,_ and when she reached for his cock he stilled her hand, and only wound himself around her more firmly, and held her to himself while she slept.

***

He decided to believe her, about the children, that perhaps his sin was his alone. As time went by, he spotted more and more of the children— _his_ children, in the various towns and camps he visited. They were easy to pick out, now that he knew the signs. And they were strong and quick or gentle and thoughtful and lovely, always so _lovely._ He stopped thinking of them as demon spawn. He didn’t know what miracle made those children from his body. Perhaps it was that he was an angel, once.

His children would grow up, and their children were glittering and wondrous too, and he loved to watch them play, and grow. He took great joy in his children. They made him feel less lonely.

Then God sent the flood.

***

The angel was there when the rain started to fall. Crowley didn’t even have to look for him.

When Azriaphale outlined what the plan was, Crowley couldn’t say he was surprised. It was a neat solution, he supposed. Sorting out good from bad was difficult, in humans. _Fiendishly_ difficult, considering that good and bad usually lived snugged together in the same individual. Eliminate the entire population at one go. Start fresh. It was tidy, the way Heaven liked it. Notions like _guilt_ or _innocence_ —judgment would come in Heaven. No, a flood made sense. It was elegant and efficient. It just wasn’t...fair.

In that moment, Crowley was chagrined to discover that there was still a part of his demon heart that believed that Heaven would do the right thing, would be fair, would be _just_. In spite of mounting evidence to the contrary.

So no, he wasn’t surprised. Appalled, yes, devastated, yes, but not surprised. And it was easy enough to disguise his rage and agony behind snake eyes and sarcasm, and the angel was the only one there for him to attack.

“Why are you here, then?” he asked. “It’s all decided. _You_ don’t bring the rain. What did they want you here for?”

The angel looked uncomfortable. “Oh, they...well, they uh, they. They don’t know I’m here.”

“Oh, no? Here against orders? You got another flaming sword to give away? Or perhaps a flaming canoe, this time…? Might be more useful.” He smiled, and made it as unpleasant as possible. “Harder with thousands than when it was just two. Going to save them all?”

“No.” Aziraphale’s voice was bleak. “I won’t be able to save any of them.”

“ _None_ of them?” He made sure his tone was absolutely _nasty_. The desolation in Aziraphale’s voice only made Crowley angrier, made him angry but also somehow glad, that this should hurt Aziraphale too, even if only a fraction as much as it hurt Crowley. “Then why come? Why come and be useless? What is the point of you, Angel of the Eastern Gate? You’ve got no sword and you can’t guard anyone. No one. No one God wasn’t going to save anyway.”

Aziraphale, gold and white as he had always been, was now ashen and pale. “I know,” he said. “I just. I.” He took a breath. “They’re all going to die. It doesn’t—it doesn’t matter to the Almighty; earth is just a battlefield to Heaven. But it. It, er…”

 _Oh_. Crowley peered at him. “It matters to you,” he finished, for the angel.

“Well.” Aziraphale was flustered by that, it seemed. To hear it stated so baldly. But then he said, “Yes.” He didn’t argue.

Crowley looked from the angel to where some children were playing in a mud puddle formed by the strengthening rain. “You’re as useless as I am.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said again. “But they, um. They'll have a witness. I can see to it that, er. That they won’t be alone.”

 _Oh,_ Crowley thought again. That was… that was.. there was comfort in that, of a sort. The comfort of a sheltering wing when the world was changing. But then he thought, _What do you know about being alone, angel?_ And whatever was forming in his mind was cut short.

“That’s nice,” he said finally. “They’ll still be dead, though.”

***

The rains fell. Everyone not on the ark was doomed.

Saris’s descendants were still under Crowley’s protection, as far as he was able. (It wasn’t very far.) Noah was her great-grandchild, and both Shem and Japheth had wives—sisters—whose mother had all the grace of the children of a fallen angel, and also the warm, lively eyes of her grandmother. They would be safe, no thanks to Crowley. The others all perished.

Angel and demon waited, side by side, wings folded despite the downpour, until it was over. Then Crowley fled to the desert, where it lay under well over fifteen cubits of water, sank to the bottom, and stayed there. He would have welcomed drowning.

He didn’t emerge until the waters receded, and when they did, Crowley had no choice but to come back into the world.

But he fathered no more children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my kind readers. I have loved this book for years, but that was before I knew about fandom. I'm so pleased to be writing in this space, and to be among new fans and old. Thanks for your support, everyone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For three thousand years, Crowley held himself aloof from humans, except for work. It was easy enough, when he stuck to those humans who appeared desperate for the slightest push to cast themselves bodily into sin and damnation--which was a great many of them.  
> Crowley’s resolve would have held firm had he remained on his own, he always thought. The problem came when Aziraphale almost invited him for oysters in Rome.

Time passes quickly for humans, whose little allotment of years runs out so soon, and slowly for the demon Crowley, who was here for the long haul. The earth was soon crawling with humans again, descendants of Noah and his sons and their nameless wives, or else of people from other lands who’d moved in when they saw the opportunity. Within a very few generations, human beings became just as venal and grasping and short-sighted and thoughtlessly cruel as they’d ever been. God had promised not to completely eradicate them again, though, so that was something.

The unnameable quality that characterized Crowley’s own offspring dimmed from one generation to the next, until nothing at all distinguished them from their fellows. One day he noticed that it had been years, perhaps a century, since he had last seen that glow of divinity in a human face. The realization came as a relief by that time.

Humanity had its own glow, its own flame. But Crowley knew better now than to be drawn to it. He went his way, going to and fro, and walking up and down, and keeping his focus on the already-tarnished souls that were so prevalent among humanity. He appealed to humanity’s worst nature, and watched with grim satisfaction when they, too, fell. They didn’t _have_ to succumb, Crowley always reminded himself, as he got better and better at his job. Crowley dwelt on their dull, predictable affinity for sin whenever he considered turning to them, again, for comfort. (It was better than dwelling on their dull, predictable mortality, and their vulnerability to floods.)

For three thousand years, it was enough for him to keep himself aloof.

***

Crowley’s resolve would have held firm had he remained on his own, he always thought. The problem came when Aziraphale almost invited him for oysters in Rome.

Crowley was already jaded, there in the _popina._ He was always glum when a temptation was too easy. The Roman upper classes were entirely too suspicious and entirely too creative, and before he knew it, the emperor was dead and the factions were fighting amongst themselves, and the spiral of evil was set in motion with barely a nudge from Crowley. It meant Crowley got a nod from down below, but on this particular occasion, he found it all a bit depressing.

The woman behind the counter fixed him with a glare when he sat down, and he welcomed it. She had the forthright look of the desert women of old. She made it clear without a word that she wasn’t going to take any rubbish from Crowley, and that she fully expected him to try her on anyway.

Crowley liked her right away. Accordingly, he was as surly as possible when he ordered.

“Whatever you think is drinkable,” he muttered, and prepared himself for a long afternoon. His sneering face assured that he would spend it alone. He would not be able to abide company, not from humans. Not today.

“Oh! Crawly—Crowley! Fancy!”

He looked up, and there was Aziraphale, smiling at him for all the world as if they were old friends. A little anxious, a little fidgety, but clearly pleased to see him.

Pleased to see _him_. Enough so that it made him awkward and graceless. Crowley snapped at the angel, rebuffing his first bumbling gambit, because he was gloomy and for the look of the thing. He was glad, though, when Aziraphale refused to be put off. When the angel offered him a toast (a blessing), he accepted it.

In truth, it was good to see him, comforting. The last time they’d met was on that dismal hill at Golgotha, which was something Crowley would rather not think about. As much as he ever permitted himself to, he’d liked that young man, and had therefore known he was probably beyond saving, but it was still distressing to see what they thought of to do to him. With Heaven’s blessing, apparently—which made it somehow worse than when it was just the humans being creative on their own. The angel had seemed affected also—he always was, Crowley was learning, and Crowley thought he masked it much less well than Crowley himself did. Now that he was here before him in the _popina,_ Crowley found himself ready enough to talk with him.

Aziraphale was apparently eager to come and sit with Crowley, for some reason. Crowley could almost feel that the angel _liked_ him. Which was absurd, of course; no one had liked him for thousands of years, but the fiction was a pleasant one. He let himself be lulled, and spoke civilly, and basked in the unusual sensation of speaking to someone who knew him.

And then the mention of oysters.

“I’ve never eaten an oyster,” Crowley mused. He could suddenly imagine the angel eating them, though. There he was in Crowley’s mind, sitting, pert, in front of a plate piled high with them, wriggling his fingers in delighted anticipation before tucking in. Picking up one curled shell, holding it delicately in his fingertips...and then opening his mouth, and sliding the slick, salty flesh onto his tongue.

 _Holy Hell._ He didn’t know where the mental picture had come from; for all its clarity, it was unlike anything he’d witnessed from Aziraphale before. He’d only ever seen Aziraphale looking anxious, or grim. They didn’t tend to meet on the best occasions.

Now that he’d thought it, though, he couldn’t brush it away.

And _then!_ "Let me tempt you…” said the angel.

And for the sake of a few minutes more with someone whose memory was as long as his own, Crowley had been ready to be tempted, had turned to look at him, anticipating his own agreement, and after that, a long, warm evening of talk and food and someone’s company apart from his own.

But the next instant he watched while Aziraphale realised what he’d said, what he’d been about to ask. Watched his face fall. “Oh. That's—that’s your job, isn't it."

Crowley waited to see if the angel would go ahead and ask him anyway, but he didn’t. It was a useful reminder for Crowley, that they were on opposite sides, and that he was here alone. He turned back to his cup of ale. It was hard to swallow.

Aziraphale, for his part, nervously changed the subject, twittered away about nothing as only he could, and finished his drink quickly. One fluttery _vale_ and he was gone.

 _Well,_ thought Crowley, refilling his own cup from the jug he was very glad he’d ordered, _That’s that, then._

***

Crowley went to Petronius’ restaurant the next night, out of spite. Useless, futile spite, at having been made to think he might have a respite from his terrible loneliness, if only for an evening, and then at having the angel withhold the offer at the last.

Aziraphale, who would give his only flaming sword to a couple of naked apes if that would give them a chance at warmth in a cold world, who had stood and watched the rain fall in Mesopotamia, who had kept vigil at Golgotha for hours, had chosen not to give this to Crowley. After smiling at him, after _blessing_ him, after making Crowley feel what it must be like to be...hah, _redeemable._ What power Aziraphale must still have, beneath his dainty exterior, to bring about those feelings in a demon.

Being with him had felt a little like grace. Which, for Crowley, was nothing more than a place to fall from.

Anyway, he ordered oysters. They were, as promised, remarkable, as far as that went. He was only there to prove a point, to someone who wasn’t present and didn’t care. Food, in and of itself, was not where Crowley sought comfort; he had never found it to be particularly tempting.

The young man who served him, on the other hand, was very tempting indeed.

Crowley’s defenses were already in tatters. He ate some more of his oysters, to give himself something to do while surreptitiously _not_ watching the boy.

There was a sureness to his movements that caught Crowley’s eye. An elegance that set him apart. The memory came, unbidden, of the glittering children from before the Flood, their grace and presence. Crowley smothered the thought quickly: they were a thousand years gone. His mind was not usually so undisciplined. He blamed the angel; if he’d unstuffed himself long enough to have a little fun, Crowley wouldn’t be sat here staring at this _very_ young man and thinking maudlin thoughts about people who had been dead for three thousand years.

This boy’s grace was entirely human, though, and for that, Crowley was grateful. Entirely human, entirely arresting.

He wasn’t a slave; Crowley had seen him issuing orders in the kitchen, had seen Petronius clap him on the back on his way past. He was a nephew, perhaps. But free. If he were to come to Crowley, as the women once had, it would be because he chose to.

Crowley hadn’t sought a human touch for centuries, but watching this boy, he remembered why he had. All at once it became clear that oysters were not what he was hungry for. _Well, and why not._

Just then, the boy looked up and saw him staring. Crowley made no attempt to hide it, for all that the dark glass in front of his eyes gave him some cover. The boy regarded him for a long, thoughtful moment…and then he _smiled_.

What the hell did he see in Crowley, to make him smile like _that?_ Brilliant and warm, with no shadows. Friendly. (Crowley had had a friend, once.) Hiding nothing.

 _He knows exactly what he’s offering_ , Crowley thought, watching him make his way across the room and sidle up to Crowley’s table.

As if continuing a conversation, he said to Crowley, “They do take some people that way, yes.”

“What?” said Crowley, caught off-guard.

“Oysters,” the young man explained. There was a distracting curl to his lip.

“Oyst—oh!” Crowley knew that, of course he did. He’d been a demon of temptation for millennia. “Yes, I know—I’ve heard about that.” _Pull yourself together, Crowley._

The young man shrugged expansively. “There is no way to be sure, of course. There are many things that might spark…desire.”

 _Desire._ With a low-pitched voice and an unmistakable smoulder. The boy’s confidence was devastating and total; he did not question himself for one moment. It had been well over four thousand years since Crowley had been that sure of anything.

“It’s because of the shape,” the boy went on. “ _Vide._ ” _Look._ He held up an oyster, and drew one finger, delicately, along the furled length of the shell. “ _Sicut cunnus est…_ ” _It’s like a vulva._ He gave an impish grin as he he sucked the salt off his finger.

“Is it?” Crowley said, looking at the boy’s mouth.

“So I’m told,” said the boy, the curl of his smile growing wider. “It’s not really my area.”

 _You little minx._ Crowley gathered his wits. He was thousands of years old, and a _demon_. He couldn’t let this boy be the only cheeky one. He said, “Well, in my case, they didn’t work.”

“No?” The boy frowned a little, suspecting mischief.

 _Quite right, too._ “No.” He took a drink of his wine.

“Come now.” The boy stepped in, moved closer to him, and placed a hand on the back of his chair. If the place hadn’t been so crowded, Crowley didn’t doubt he’d have run a hand up his bare shoulder. He gave a skeptical half-smile, and asked, “You feel nothing? No heat? No... _desiderium_?”

“Oh, I do.” He drained his glass and tipped his face up and back, and beckoned the boy to draw near. Then he brought his mouth to where his lips _just_ brushed the boy’s ear, and said, _“It’s just not because of the oysters.”_

***

Crowley was in, he was committed, he was—truth be told— _entranced._ It had been, perhaps, too long.

The young man—he introduced himself as Alexander, and Crowley didn’t question it, as he himself was not using his real name—led him up a dark stairwell to a room above the inn. At the top, he half-turned over his shoulder and gave Crowley that smile again, that welcoming, companionable smile that bypassed all of Crowley’s defenses.

“You have such an open face,” he said, wonderingly.

“And you do not,” Alexander responded. He forestalled Crowley’s stuttered protest by saying, “But hide your eyes as you want, Corvus. I am not after your secrets. Come,” he said. “You like my open face. Let me show you what else I have that is open.” He held out his hands.

Crowley took them, a smile of his own starting to form. “You are shameless,” he said.

“Ah, you approve.” He turned to lead him through the doorway.

“I do,” he said. “I have seen enough of shame.”

***

Upstairs, leaning weak-kneed on the wall, Crowley watched, helpless, while Alexander dropped easily to his knees, and reached for his knotted belt. At the last possible moment he perceived the young man’s intent and made sure that when Alexander opened Crowley’s garment, he found what he was expecting to find. That was the last lucid thing he was able to do, as the boy parted his red lips, breathed hot, wet air across his skin, and let Crowley’s cock slide deep into his throat.

In his _mouth_. Crowley had forgotten the terrible kindness of humans, and it nearly demolished him, there in that upper room. Alexander had gone to his knees and taken Crowley’s member _into his mouth_ , to suckle him and swallow him, to lick and to taste, and it was all Crowley could do to stay upright, half-collapsed against the wall, as Alexander slid his wet, red lips down to the base of his cock and never looked away from Crowley’s face.

All the while, he smiled—not with his mouth, of course, but with his eyes, that gleamed and sparkled and laughed up at Crowley. He took such _joy_ in it all. And shared it, freely, with Crowley.

With a great deal of effort, Crowley recovered some of his senses, closed his mouth, and brought one hand up to stroke through Alexander’s dark curls. He felt some of the boy’s same joy rising up in his own breast, though, and he needed, now, he _needed_ to touch him.

Crowley pulled the boy up of his knees and kissed him, tasted him. With the taste of Alexander’s mouth there was another smell, which Crowley realised with a start was his own scent. Demons were not creatures of the earth; he hadn’t known his cock would smell so... _animal_. Or so stirring. 

Nothing compared to the scent and taste of this human, though, and Crowley wanted more. He took him by the shoulders and steered them both to the small couch in the corner that served Alexander for a bed, kissing him and feeling the heat and health of his body with his hands. He placed him, seated, on the divan, took the lone cushion and set it on the floor, and settled himself on his knees.

A flash of uncertain surprise crossed the boy’s face. Crowley waited a moment, but when he didn’t say anything, he lifted the boy’s tunic, exposing his thighs.

 _His thighs._ Crowley had seen four thousand years’ worth of humans come and go but sometimes their beauty was just too much. These thighs: straight and strong and round, almost plush, with muscle. Crowley used his hands to press them together so that they met to make a smooth, pale, sumptuous cushion, two luxurious mounds of muscular flesh, in which rested Alexander’s high, firm testicles, and the pillar of his erect cock.

 _What a feast._ Crowley could believe his mouth was actually filling up with saliva at the sight. He wanted to bury his whole face in those thighs, push down between them and kiss, side to side, one then the other, and back. He wanted to nose up to Alexander’s furred balls, to the base of his cock; to lick, to mouth, to _soak_ him, and to gather his cock into his mouth.

But when Crowley ran his hands up the outside of those strong, bare legs and up, pushing away the hem of his tunic, Alexander stopped him.

Crowley looked up. “What is it?”

Alexander said, “You _can’t_ want to do that.”

Crowley frowned, confused. “You did it yourself only a moment ago.”

“Yes, but I’m…and you’re...” And oh, yes, Crowley should have known, there were _rules_. This was Rome, of course there were rules. The younger man, the _lower_ man, was penetrated. It was seen as...unmanly, in some way. Sure enough, the boy finished, weakly, “You can’t do that. Not if you are a man.”

Crowley almost laughed. Well, he had only ever lain with people who knew what he was. He saw no reason to change that now. He said, “Do you think that I am a man, then?”

“Ah.” There was a short silence as understanding dawned. ”Is that why you hide your eyes?”

“Yes,” Crowley admitted, “I am a demon, with demon eyes.” And then, because they were sharing their bodies, he asked, reluctantly, “Would you like to see them?”

Another pause, hesitant. Then, because he was a wonder and a marvel, Alexander asked, “Do you really want to show them to me?”

Crowley answered honestly and gratefully. “No,” he said. “But I will if you ask.”

“If I _ask_. You are a demon, here in my room. I am at your mercy. Would you leave right now, if I asked it? ”

 _Please don’t,_ Crowley thought, but he said, “I want nothing from you that you don’t choose to give.” He took a breath, and told the truth. “I would leave.”

Alexander thought about that. Then he asked his last question: “If you’re a demon, what do you want with me?”

 _Finally, an easy one._ Crowley grinned. “Principally, right at this minute,” he said, “I want to have your pretty cock in my mouth.”

Alexander did laugh at that, and Crowley marvelled, again, at his stupid human courage. _Crowley_ knew that Alexander was in no danger from him, but Alexander did not know that. He looked at Crowley, who was still at his feet. Crowley looked back as unthreateningly as he could, though he did let his tongue sneak out and wet his lips.

“No one has ever offered this to me,” he said finally. That, apparently, was his answer.

“This is a first for me as well,” Crowley said, rising up on his knees again. “But I am known for my clever tongue.”

*******

Crowley’s tongue _was_ clever. He only had the one these days, the world having become crowded, but it was still a little snake-like in its coil and grip when he chose. He slid the rough muscle over and around the young man’s sturdy cock, gliding up and down, serpentine, twisting and wet, as Alexander gasped and sighed. He drew off slightly, squeezing all the way to the top, and the taste of the boy’s arousal burst into his mouth, salty and slick. Animal, just like his own taste. _Proof of kinship._ Crowley savoured it.

He raised his head to see how he had wrought so far, at the flushed and straining prick, still cradled in those lush thighs, wet now, and leaking.

This _was_ comfort, it _was,_ and Crowley was grateful.

 _Grateful_. How could this boy, this, this _human,_ who had nothing at all, just a pittance of years and then gone, how could he have such a gift to give, and choose to give it to _Crowley?_ And he gave it _all_ to him, held Crowley’s face between his thighs, pushed his cock up into Crowley’s throat, shoved his fingers into the short, red tendrils of his curls, and filled Crowley’s mouth with his come.

And then! And _then!_ Though still lax with his pleasure, he used his hands to raise Crowley up from the floor, slid his hands into and under the folds of Crowley’s garments, wrapped his arms around his hips to grasp his buttocks, and took Crowley’s prick deep into his mouth again.

Crowley was thousands of years old, but his control was already in tatters under the onslaught of that _mouth_. Gone was the friendly, cheerful smile from before; Alexander was now intense and panting. He looked set to swallow Crowley whole, to drink him down, to devour him. And Crowley was helpless to do anything but let himself be consumed. He watched, he _stared_ , he could not look away, and when Alexander, making muffled sounds with a mouth stuffed full of Crowley’s flesh, raised his wide eyes to Crowley’s face like a supplicant, what could Crowley do but give him everything he asked for? He came, he came deep into Alexander’s willing throat, and did not close his eyes.

***

After, he held Alexander’s chin in his hand, and used his own robe to gently clean his face. While the boy’s head lolled and tilted and came to rest against Crowley’s hip. _So trusting_. Crowley gently stroked his fingers through the boy’s hair, and gazed at him, and pretended he deserved it.

“Corvus,” Alexander murmured, after a time. “Thank you.”

“Oh, the thanks are all mine to give, my beautiful boy.” Crowley put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and lay him, reclined, on the couch. He picked up the cushion from the floor and settled it behind the boy’s shoulders, against the arm of the bed, and pulled a folded rug up over the boy’s legs.

“Corvus,” Alexander said, indistinctly.

Crowley said, “Mmm?”

“It is a good name for you.” His voice was drowsy and a little slurred.

“It is,” Crowley said. “I, too, am a creature of ill omen.”

“No, no. You are good.” He spoke around a yawn. “You are a good demon.”

“I am only good at being a demon, Alexander,” he warned. “You are feeling perhaps more peaceful than you ought to.”

“No,” he said, more asleep than awake. “I am safe with you.”

There was no sense in disputing it, prepared as he was to guard the boy through the night if need be. He tucked the blanket snugly around the boy’s hips, and bent to kiss his forehead.

“Go to sleep, Alexander.”

Obediently, Alexander sighed and settled, and then he was asleep.

***

It was only fleeting companionship. Of course it was fleeting; _humans_ were fleeting. It was nothing that could last, but now that Crowley had tasted, again, the comfort and peace that could come from sharing another’s body, he did not want to go back to his solitude. There was no companionship to be had, for him, that _wasn’t_ fleeting. The demons in Hell were incapable, there was no gentleness or intimacy to be had with them. As for Heaven, well, they liked things clean, certain, distant. Besides, Crowley was banished these four thousand years.

And Aziraphale couldn’t fathom even having oysters with him. He had left him alone, in Rome, their four thousand year acquaintance evidently not enough to justify suspending their differences long enough to share a meal. If Crowley had ever thought that he and the angel might have some place to meet, some common place to stand, he did not think so anymore. There was no help there.

So that left humans.

Humans could become pregnant, there was that. But Crowley could not, could _not_ beget any more children. He would not give Heaven that kind of power over him again. But there were many humans who were safe from that kind danger, and perhaps some of them might see him, and want him.

Humans were also lovely, when they weren’t cruel or petty or paranoid, and generous, and they sometimes reached out to Crowley, in a way that none of his own kind would ever think of doing. Crowley gladly basked in their...their _charity_ , he had to call it. They must have known that he, as a demon, was a creature of sin, a fallen thing, yet they took him to themselves regardless.

On an infinitely small scale, and for a desperately brief time, it was a bit like absolution.

Thus Crowley ended his three thousand year penance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there will be readers who are by now painfully aware that I don't know Latin. Siemejay does, and after I spent some fairly fruitless time on various Internet translators, she let me know when I was closest to the mark.  
> I also spent more time than many people might wish reading up on Roman attitudes towards sex between men, and what acts they might decide to get up to, which helped me for the next chapter as well.  
> After that, we will hopefully get out of the Roman Empire, but you know... in canon they stay in Britain for a _very_ long time. Feels like Spain is as far away as they get, once they get there.  
> Thank you, as always, for reading and offering me your support.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley has plenty to do. Rome itself is only one of a thousand places in the world for Crowley to make trouble. He's not quite ready to leave the whole Empire behind--there's so much _scope_ for him here--but he makes his way to less central parts of it. He's certainly not avoiding Aziraphale. Sin is everywhere, after all. Comfort...not so common.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things to note: One scene in this chapter takes place in an arena where prisoners are executed by beasts. This was a usual method at the time, and it's loosely referencing the massacre of Christians at Lugdunum in 177 AD. There's a passing mention of blood. It's not very graphic, and it happens in the background, but everyone's triggers are different. Be safe.

A fallen angel using his corporeal form to seduce humans drew no notice from either Heaven or Hell. Heaven because Crowley was already damned, and moreover they saw their ultimate victory as assured; Hell because _incubus_ was a perfectly legitimate role for a demon set on making mischief on earth. Crowley’s stolen hours with humans were never used to tempt them, or to tarnish them. He was, as he saw it, _off-duty_ during those times. So long as he tempted and tarnished sufficiently the rest of the time, though, Hell did not notice anything amiss. Crowley feared no retribution from either side.

There was only one other person who might have Views about Crowley’s behaviour, but it was easy enough to avoid Aziraphale. Crowley had seen him twice in less than a decade, it was true. He’d been too dispirited the last time to realise how odd that was, but it _was_ odd, and therefore unlikely to happen again. If Crowley thought about him at all—which he did, in passing, at times; it was only natural—he considered that it could easily be another century or more before they ran into each other again. Much more if Crowley were to actively avoid him. Not that he would bother; what did the judgment of a fretful angel mean to him?

It was therefore _not_ because he was avoiding Aziraphale that Crowley found himself in the middle of Gaul, in Lugdunum, the following century. He needed to stay within the Roman Empire—there was so much scope for evil and mischief—but he couldn’t imagine Aziraphale heading this far out of the capital. Ha, Aziraphale never went beyond where he could find a good restaurant, and what did these _Galli_ know about fine food and wine? 

It wasn’t that there was that much for Crowley to do, either. Certainly there were emperors to pit against each other and a lovely scattering of new religious movements susceptible to persecution, but as usual these humans required very little in the way of temptation or encouragement in order to commit atrocities against one another. It left a sour feeling in Crowley’s belly, but Hell _loved_ that sort of thing, and if Crowley was seen to be nearby when it happened, he could safely take credit for it. 

He didn’t take any pleasure in it, though. On the day of a particularly brutal execution—in public, by beasts who were in no way as savage as their masters—Crowley attended the arena, brooding, on his bench. He didn’t want to see this, but he felt called upon to...well, to witness. As Aziraphale would say. Futile, of course, but it felt necessary.

“Who are these ones, again?” A man had fetched up beside Crowley’s bench in the amphitheater. He seemed unimpressed by the carnage below, where one of the prisoners was already dead. He had a small packet of dates to nibble on, and was chewing loudly. “Deserters? Murderers?”

Crowley said, shortly, “Don’t know.”

“They’re a Jewish sect, I heard.” A third spectator piped up from the next row. When he turned, Crowley could see that his face was pocked and scarred from disease. “Heretics. All the way from Greece.”

The first man scoffed. “Greece? Nah, the Jews are from Syria.”

 _Judea_ , thought Crowley, but didn’t correct them. He was only half-listening. This kind of mundane stupidity might present Crowley with an opportunity for a cheap and nasty temptation, but not the kind he could really get enthusiastic about. A second man had succumbed down below. This one was older, his white beard now red with blood.

“I’m sure they said Greece,” Scarface insisted. They watched in silence for a moment, amid weakening cries from the victims, and then the man went on, “They’re heretics, anyway. Good riddance. Heard they want to do away with the gods, or something, can you imagine?”

The first man gave a harsh laugh, spraying bits of chewed fruit onto the front of his clothes. “Do away with them? How do you kill a god, then?”

“Funny you should say that,” the man in front said, scratching a scab on his neck. “Apparently their god actually did get killed.”

Hearing that, Crowley frowned.

The man with the dates evidently shared his scepticism. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

The one in front smiled, pleased at the reaction. “Yeah, that’s how I heard it,” he said. “Crucified.”

 _Crucified._ Suddenly Crowley was listening very, _very_ closely. Maybe not, _maybe_ not. Plenty of people were crucified. Hundreds. Didn’t have to be— 

“Crucified? Not much of a god, then.” The man stuffed another date into his already full mouth. Around it, he asked, “Where was that?”

“In...Tyre, I think it was. Or Damascus. Yes, that’s right, he was a carpenter there. Damascus.”

Carpenter. _Well, even if it was him, so what?_ Crowley thought, swallowing his nausea. _He’s been dead for almost two hundred years, and these poor wretches would only have lived another decade or two anyway. No sense grieving._

“Jerusalem,” he said, his voice catching a little. “It was in Jerusalem.” 

The two men looked at him, surprised.

“And he wasn’t a god,” Crowley added. “He wasn’t a god. He was just a man, a human man.”

“Well, he must have been a bad one, if they crucified him,” the man with the dates said decisively. “You don’t get crucified just for—” here he smacked Crowley on the shoulder with a hearty laugh _“—hanging around with the wrong people_ , eh?”

Crowley looked at him through smoked lenses, and _didn’t_ bare his teeth at him, and _didn’t_ burst into his serpent form and swallow him whole. _Be kind to each other,_ the boy had said. And two centuries later his followers were getting ripped apart by wild dogs in the arena.

Crowley said, uselessly, “Maybe he just wanted to help people live a better life.”

“Not just a heretic, then,” the man with the scars said decisively. “A fool, too.”

Crowley looked down at the arena floor where the last of the young man’s followers was twitching weakly, beset by starving dogs, and could not disagree. The man was dead enough, for all of Crowley’s _witness_. He rose from his stone bench and left as quickly as he could.

Luckily there were plenty of places to get wine nearby. Many found public spectacles like this one more enjoyable with some liquor in their veins.

***

Crowley was leaning on the high table where he stood and broadcasting _fuck off_ on as many frequencies as he knew. He expected to be left alone, so it came as a surprise when a voice beside him said softly, 

“It’s a bad business, right enough.”

He glanced up, ready to snarl, but the creased face looking back at him halted his venom. _Gentle_ , he thought, before he could stop himself. There was something gentle about the man.

So instead of snarling, he played stupid. “What is.”

Blue eyes crinkled around a lopsided smile. “That barbarism in the arena, which is where you just came from, looking like you swallowed a wineskin of gall. So either you knew the poor devils being torn apart—and you don’t look like a local—or it makes you as sick as it makes me.”

“Dangerous talk,” said Crowley, taking a drink. “It’s all for the glory of the Emperor.”

“The Emperor has glory to spare,” said the man. “My glory to him means as little as does my pity to the dead men.”

Curiosity sparked in Crowley, making a space within the swirling misery. He turned towards the man, to see him better. He said, “You pity them, then?” 

“Aye,” he said, in the manner of men from the far north. “I do.”

Crowley signaled the server for another cup, and filled it for him.

Theman’s name was Brennan. “Brennus, to the Romans, but my mother was from the north, and it’s Brennan.”

“Mine is Crowley.” He did not need to Latinize it for this man, that much was clear.

“Not a Roman name either,” Brennan observed.

“I’m not a Roman,” Crowley said, and did not offer any more detail. He meant no offense, and Brennan took none. He was an easy companion.

An easy companion, indeed. As they drained and refilled their cups, he talked and joked and spun yarns and asked Crowley no more questions than he wished to answer. They spoke no more of the martyred Christians, and Brennan’s eyes were soon aglow again, with humour and good cheer. He was a veteran of the Germanic campaign, with the scars to show for it, and a tattoo, he said, that was very un-Roman indeed. Only the very fortunate were allowed to see it, he indicated with a wink, and Crowley allowed himself to smile at his audacity. Brennan smiled back, eyes alight and heated; _oh yes,_ an easy companion. 

This was Brennan’s natural state, Crowley could see; warm and amicable and ready to laugh. _Exuberant_ , thought Crowley. Everything he did was exuberant.

When he put his hands on Crowley, his touch, too, was exuberant. Vigorous, firm, and sure, like everything else he did, and full of his whole self. Crowley wanted to drown in him.

“You’ve had a heavy day,” Brennan said, into Crowley’s neck, boldly, there in the bar.

 _Several hundred thousand of them,_ Crowley thought. “Mmm,” he agreed. “Yes I have.”

“Well, _Crowley,_ ” Brennan said, making Crowley’s very name sound suggestive. “Let me see if I can’t take your mind off it for a while.”

Crowley was slightly drunk and terribly unhappy, but Brennan was strong and forward and had lifted his spirits handily already. Crowley could feel himself sinking into this man’s confidence, into his charge. What a relief it would be to relinquish control, if only for an hour or two. Brennan was watching him now, like he was a gift and a feast all in one—and a treasure, too; the warmth in his blue eyes said he meant to treat him very well indeed.

He meant to _take care_ of him. _Care._ It was now a sudden, terrible need.

“If you want me tonight,” he said plainly, “I am yours.”

***

They made their way out into the night. Brennan stepped boldly, drawing Crowley along, and Crowley let himself be led. Brennan’s arm around his waist was a welcome weight, an anchor, safe. Crowley was drunk enough that he could melt a little, could lean into the strong and hearty body at his side. Brennan made some small joke and Crowley laughed; it was funny so he laughed. It felt good.

This Brennan had a captivating presence, and he took up Crowley’s whole field of vision. The street was crowded and bustling, even at this late hour, and there would have been plenty to distract him, to draw his attention away from the brawny soldier who had taken him on, if he’d wanted to be distracted. He did not; Brennan’s whole person was just the balm Crowley needed, to soothe him after the brutality of the morning, and to bury his sorrow for a time. There were many things Crowley would just as soon forget, and Brennan—brash and stalwart—eclipsed them all. 

It therefore took much longer than it should have for Crowley to recognise the stunned figure that stood, stock-still, in the middle of the street, directly in their path. By the time he did, it was too late to pretend this was anything other than exactly what it was. 

In a single moment, Aziraphale saw him, saw Brennan, saw what was happening—and likely saw a good deal more besides, clever bastard that he was. Crowley stopped short and raised his chin, glaring at the angel. He wished he was anywhere else, but he wasn’t going to show the angel that.

He spoke coldly. “Well, Aziraphale?” 

“Oh, my dear,” the angel breathed. He had never called him that before. It didn’t help. “Is it...is it so bad?”

 _How fucking dare you._ Crowley would rather have his judgment than his pity. 

“Not bad at all,” he said, lifting his head, but keeping his body plastered to Brennan’s side. “In fact, I expect it to be a rousing good time.”

Brennan’s expression was bland and his body relaxed, but he still managed to be standing a little in front of Crowley. _He means to defend me,_ Crowley thought. _Against the Angel of the Eastern Gate, if need be._ Such innocence and valour. 

Aziraphale could read Brennan’s stance as well as Crowley could, but he utterly failed to be charmed by it. He flicked his eyes over him and back to Crowley. 

“Does he know what you are?”

 _What you are_. Contempt, then, to go with the pity. “It’s nothing to do with you.” But Crowley could hear himself that his words were more sullen than defiant.

Brennan spoke up. “My friend has the right of it. It is nothing to do with you what I know or what I don’t know. I see more than you might think, stranger, and the rest is his to tell me, or not, as he chooses.” His voice was affable enough, but there was steel in it. He did not care how far beyond him this was; he would take Crowley’s side regardless. 

Aziraphale, for his part, ignored him. To Crowley he said, “What about after?”

Crowley didn’t meet his eye. “After what?”

Starkly: “After he’s gone.” 

_Gone_. The next day, and also a decade or two in the future; of course he would be gone. _He can’t even let me escape for one day._ His meaning was entirely clear.

Crowley opted to misunderstand. “ _After_ ,” he said mockingly, “I shall be well shagged.”

Brennan gave an earthy laugh at that. “I do hope so,” he said, and—as if this were not the most awful and awkward encounter he had ever witnessed—planted a kiss on Crowley’s shoulder.

“Oh, good lord,” Aziraphale said, exasperated. “He’s as bad as you are.”

“Well shagged,” Crowley said again, sensing victory. And then he added, “And there will be no children to drown.” 

The moment he said it, he knew he’d miscalculated. Brennan drew a sharp breath and went still at his side, and Aziraphale’s face turned pale. _Never know when to shut up, do you._

“Children…?” Aziraphale looked stricken. “Crowley, I—”

 _No._ He cut him off: “There is no downside, angel.” Then he added, nastily, “Maybe you should try it sometime.” He examined the corner of his robe, as though scratching off a spot, hoping to look detached and, ha, _devil-may-care_. He couldn’t look at Brennan, though he could feel his steady gaze. Would this ever end?

Aziraphale, too, only looked at him, in silence, for a long, long time. When he spoke, it was softly. “I’m sorry, my dear.” There was no reproach in his voice, only terrible compassion. “Does it, does it help? Really?” His words were almost pleading. “Will it help,” he asked again, “doing this...with him?”

 _Condemnation would have been better than this._ He let his eyes focus for a moment, directly on Aziraphale. “Who else do you propose, angel?” He made no attempt to hide the venom in his voice. “You?”

Aziraphale drew back, startled, and his eyes flitted left and right. His whole body radiated confusion, even alarm, which was all the answer Crowley needed.

“Just as I thought. You have your oysters, Aziraphale, and I have this.” He gave him a sneering grin. “Goodbye, angel,” he said. “Come find me when you have a better solution.” 

Brennan’s allegiance, meanwhile, had not shifted in the slightest throughout this last exchange, and he easily shelved whatever questions he might have had, and took his cue from Crowley. With a genial nod at the angel that nevertheless managed to be dripping with insolence, he wrapped his arm more tightly around Crowley’s waist, brazenly possessive, and continued down the street. Moreover, he didn’t move aside quite far enough, so that Aziraphale had to give way a little as they passed. Even so, Brennan brushed him none too gently with his shoulder as they passed.

If Crowley hadn’t already been eager to go to this man’s bed and be taken, this alone would have convinced him.

The angel watched them steadily as they walked away; Crowley could feel his gaze, steady, cold, like rain on the invisible wings that only Aziraphale, in all the world, knew that he had.

One last _digitus impudicus_ over his shoulder made him feel marginally better about it.

***

Brennan’s room, when they reached it, was modest but clean, and it contained a bed, which was all Crowley cared about. There was a lamp resting on the table in the corner, but it was not lit. The light that filtered through the single window from the bustling street below was sufficient for their purposes. Crowley watched him latch the door, each movement purposeful. 

As soon as Brennan had shut away the outside world, Crowley was on him, grasping and tugging at his garments, and pressing his body up against him.

Brennan made a muffled sound of surprise, but didn’t push him away, so Crowley didn’t stop, giving every impression of frenzied desire before the other man had the chance to formulate any questions. He’d worked his way under Brennan’s cloak and was unfastening the belt of his tunic when gentle hands slid down his shoulders and held him still.

“Steady, friend,” Brennan said, soothing. “There is no reason to hurry.”

“Yes, but—” Crowley protested, trying to wriggle free.

“No reason,” Brennan repeated firmly, “And no questions you don’t want to answer.”

Crowley froze for the smallest fraction of a second. _No questions._ Another human, giving a priceless gift to a stranger as if it were nothing. When Crowley met his eyes at last, the same warm, expressive face he’d been looking at all evening returned his gaze, honest and undemanding. He felt his shoulders soften; he hadn’t realised how tense he’d been. He let out a long breath, and nodded.

Brennan’s face crinkled up in a smile. “All right, then.”

He released Crowley’s elbows and brought both of his hands up to cradle his face, fingers curled beneath his jaw and along his throat, thumbs gentle. The touch was firm, knowing, and Crowley gave in to the urge to relax into those hands, to let his face be turned this way and that as Brennan considered how best to claim him.

 _Claim._ It was the only word for the way Brennan took charge of Crowley’s mouth. In his kiss there was everything Brennan had shown him tonight—wisdom and kindness, yes, and skill, but also soldier’s ruthlessness, no room to be timid in the face of _what must be done,_ and every press and shift of Brennan’s mouth and tongue showed clearly that he knew beyond a doubt what _must be done_ with Crowley. It only remained for Crowley to submit.

 _So good._ It felt _so good_ to surrender. To abdicate. Such a relief to place himself in Brennan’s hands, and let his mind empty. Mouth, hands, breath, heat—these were all that mattered in this room. Big, scarred, gentle hands, to hold his face and part his clothes; to slide up, slide under, slide into; to lay Crowley’s almost-human body bare with tidy, efficient movements; to move his limbs and arrange him over the bed; to run the length of him over and over, soothing and grounding.

At last Brennan pulled his own tunic over his head and there were no more garments to remove. Putting his hands back on Crowley’s body, he turned him and stepped up close behind him. With one hand splayed on Crowley’s belly, he gave a gentle shove with his chest until Crowley fell forwards, catching himself with braced arms on the head of the bed. Brennan’s other rough palm slid over Crowley’s hip and buttocks, and reached between his thighs to curl around his testicles from behind, stroking and fondling and gathering them up in his careful hand. He held him securely against his chest.

“Crowley,” he said roughly. “What I want from you…” He paused, though still stroking the thin, delicate skin of his balls. It was a new sensation.

“Yes?” Crowley heard how his own voice was breathless. “Why do you hesitate now? What is it?”

“It is very…” He let the hand that cupped Crowley’s balls slide backward, drawing it up inside the crease of his arse. His meaning was clear. “It is very un-Roman.”

 _Oh._ And wasn’t that exactly what he’d been picturing all evening, even before he knew how it would spite Aziraphale. “I am not a Roman,” he said. 

Brennan laughed at that, low, in Crowley’s ear. “No,” he agreed. “You are not like any Roman, nor any other man I have ever known.” 

“Then let us do this un-Roman thing together,” Crowley said, covering Brennan’s hand on his chest with his own. “Your words are truer than you know.”

Brennan kissed up the side of his neck. “I am not naturally uncurious, friend,” he said. “Do not tempt me with forbidden hints.” But he was smiling, Crowley could feel it in the shape of his mouth.

“Then you’d better find something else to occupy me,” he said, pressing his hips backwards.

Brennan _groaned_ then, groaned and took Crowley’s hips in both hands, _hard_ , pulling him hard against his hard prick. Crowley gasped, and they rocked together, both breathing unevenly.

“Don’t wait,” Crowley said. “I’m ready. I’m ready now.”

“A moment,” Brennan said, and with a squeeze of his hands, he stepped away. He was back again almost immediately, with the lamp from the table. Crowley watched over his shoulder as Brennan poured some oil over his fingers, then closed his eyes as the slick, rugged hand slid between his buttocks and glide wetly over the opening there.

When one thick finger breached him, he let out a moan. He hadn’t known what this would feel like, and the sensations were intense. His muscles shifted, his spine stretched, as his body made room for the intrusion. _Ah_ , that was how. He pressed back onto Brennan’s hand, taking his finger deep inside.

Brennan, true to his earlier promise, seemed disinclined to rush. He pressed in and pulled out, swirled his other fingers over the softening hole, kissed and nipped at Crowley’s back and shoulders, and made soft, growling noises of enjoyment.

He spoke, too, while he touched and stroked, calling him _lovely_ , calling him _precious_ , calling him _divine._

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Crowley said, as Brennan sprawled across his back and kissed his spine. It came out on a moan, though, and Brennan laughed. 

“I know enough to take the gifts that come my way, and I know how to value them,” he said, twisting the finger he had up Crowley’s arse and sliding another in alongside it.

Crowley gasped at the stretch; Brennan’s fingers were not small. 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” the big man crooned. “Let me get some more oil in there.”

He reached for the lamp, where he had set it on the bed, but in his excitement, and due to only using one hand, he fumbled it, and it fell and spilled onto the floor.

Brennan swore, fervently. “That was all the oil I had,” he said. He pulled his fingers out. “Maybe if I—”

 _No._ Crowley didn’t want to wait for whatever mundane, time-consuming solution Brennan was going to suggest. He made a small movement with his fingers. “Maybe there’s still enough left in the lamp.”

“No, it—” Brennan started, bending to retrieve the lamp. He spilled a bit more because the little clay vessel was much, much fuller than he was expecting. Full to overflowing.

There was a little beat while Brennan considered the lamp that lay in his hands, heavy now with oil. He was not a stupid man. After a moment, Crowley raised his head and looked at him over his shoulder.

“Is there enough?” he asked, his voice not quite pleading. _You said no questions._

Brennan raised his eyes to Crowley’s face and regarded him for the space of a breath or two, his expression unreadable. Crowley waited to be cast out. Again.

But Brennan smiled at him at last, with a little nod, and said only, “There is enough, yes.” And then, “Where was I?”

“Two fingers up my arse, as I recall,” Crowley told him, relief making him more brazen even than usual. 

“Ah, yes.” 

And _oh_ , Crowley was glad for his little demonic miracle, because the next minute Brennan slid his two fingers back inside and they glided into place so smoothly, and _ah, ah,_ he hadn’t expected this, he was always surprised by pleasure anyway, surprised that someone might want to please him, and that his body could generate such, such, _oh._ His thoughts scattered with a twist of those thick fingers, and he keened a desperate cry.

“Tell me you’re ready for me.” The voice was ragged in his ear. “Only tell me, Crowley, please, you’re so, you’re so—” 

“ _I’m ready.”_ He was _more than_ ready.

The slick fingers withdrew, and the next moment, he felt the plump head of Brennan’s cock press against his entrance. There was a stretch— _oh,_ quite a stretch—as Brennan opened Crowley’s body around his prick. A long, slow, steady slide, and he was in. He stayed there, not moving, and they breathed together.

 _Always something new._ Crowley thought about the muscles and organs within his pelvis in a way he’d rarely had to before, about being filled, physically filled up by someone else. This act, on one level, warranted all the raucous jokes and sneering distaste it was subjected to. On another level, Crowley had been alone for thousands of years, completely alone, as he would be tomorrow, and for thousands more years, but right now there was a warm, solid man pressed up against him, pushing deep inside his body so that wherever Crowley moved, Brennan was there, mouth to his ear and chest to his back and arm around his ribs and thighs to his buttocks and _cock_ in his _arse_ , he was _everywhere_ , letting Crowley be nothing but this body that was filled and held and taken and _not alone._

Making a sound deep in his chest, Crowley tilted his hips and shifted his body on Brennan’s cock, arching against the stretch and slide, feeling the slick, hard flesh gliding along the inside of his body, thrusting back—and again—and again—and moaning out his pleasure as he moved.

“Oh, yes, that’s—that’s lovely, Crowley, that’s—oh, that’s…” 

Brennan’s garbled speech faded to wordless sounds as they found their rhythm and then it was nothing but slick noises and panting breaths, and moans and sighs that caught and broke. Crowley thought distantly that Brennan, too, must have come with his own solitude, desperate as he was to hold and press, to surround and fill. Having had the thought, he was seized with a sudden urge to see the other man’s face as they moved. He did not stop to consider the wisdom of this desire, but only pulled away and pushed Brennan down onto his back on the divan. Pausing only to pour more oil, liberally, onto Brennan’s red member, he settled across his hips and sank down, down, down onto his cock.

When he looked at Brennan’s face, his eyes were wide, his expression raw. For a wild moment Crowley wanted to turn again, have his back to him, not have to see such stark—was it need? Or awe? Crowley didn’t _think_ it was fear, but...then Brennan’s face transformed into a look of infinite tenderness, and his deep, deep sigh ended in the barest hint of a smile. _Not fear, then._

“And to think,” he said, breathing hard and sliding his hands up to grip Crowley’s hips. “To think I took you for a mortal man.”

Crowley eyed him, still doubtful, still wary. _Tell him._ “I am a demon,” he said.

“You are a wonder,” Brennan gasped. He gripped with his hands, pulling Crowley down towards him, and at the same time he _thrust_ with his hips, deep and sure. He meant Crowley could stay. Crowley arched down to meet him.

Oh, and yes, it was lovely, so lovely now, to see Brennan’s face, to see his eyes go wide and then squeeze shut in his pleasure. For all his ready humour, the lines around his eyes did not all come from smiling. It was lovely to lean over him and see in his face, and _know_ , that this at least was something that felt good to him, something that he wanted and needed _,_ and that it was Crowley, of all the creatures abroad on the earth, who could give it to him, even just for one night.

They lost themselves in the sensations, each urging the other on, taking pleasure in the moans and sighs of the other. Brennan lay, eyes closed, hands loose on Crowley’s hips, giving long, rolling thrusts, one after another after another, and on and on, so that Crowley felt he was rocking, afloat on some warm sea, and Brennan drifted with him.

When Brennan approached his climax, though, he came back to himself a little. His eyes opened and his movements became harder and faster. His moans found form again, made words amid the cries:

“Ah, that’s it, that’s—that’s... _daemon, daemon, oh, come with me.”_ He wrapped one hand around Crowley’s prick and the sudden new stimulus crashed over him and he cried out, and Brennan said, “Yes, oh, yes, _yes,_ my gentle daemon, come, come with—”

And his hand moved and his hips thrust and Crowley pressed down and met him stroke for stroke, and he felt the swell and heat deep inside him when Brennan came, and he cried out again and spilled over the rough hand closed around him, and collapsed as Brennan whispered, “Lovely daemon,” and took him in his arms.

***

True to his word, Brennan asked no questions at all, even later, when they lay tangled together on his sleeping couch. He only kissed Crowley, and stroked him, and cradled him against his chest and told him, again, that he was altogether lovely, and called him _daemon_. Crowley smiled into the warm skin.

The room was quiet. Not silent exactly; the clamour from the street below continued, only slightly abated as the hour grew later. Crowley listened as Brennan's breathing slowed and steadied.

"It helped me," Brennan murmured into his hair. 

"Mm?" Crowley's own torpor made him slow.

"He asked if it helped."

 _Oh._ Crowley tensed. "No questions."

"You're a hard man, to still refuse me after a fuck like that," came the unperturbed rumble. "But it wasn't a question."

"Brennan…" Crowley made to raise his head, but Brennan ran soothing hands over him.

"Have no fear, Crowley, daemon, whatever you are. Your eyes and your secrets are your own." There was laughter, _laughter_ , in his voice. "I'm sure they go beyond always having lamp oil when you need it."

That surprised a snort out of Crowley, and he wondered if there was anything this man could not find a joke in. 

"Thank you," he said.

"Thank _you,_ " Brennan countered. "This is not a habit with me. There is not usually comfort for me in taking a stranger to bed. With you there was.” He hesitated. “That man—or perhaps he is a daemon too—”

“He’s an angel,” Crowley said. _Might as well._

“Ah,” came the reply. Then: “He didn’t speak to you like an enemy.”

“Whatever it looked like, it is his righteous purpose to oppose me.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “He does it very badly, then.”

There seemed to be nothing to say to that. They let a few moments pass without speaking. Then Brennan spoke again: 

“He did not look righteous,” he said. “Only worried.”

“You are very good at not asking questions,” Crowley said, only a little sourly.

Brennan laughed softly, and his voice was gentle. "Here is one more, then: When, as a soldier in the legions of Rome, I am sent to the north, to keep the peace, as they say. To keep _order_ , I...the men there seem like cousins to me, not enemies. I prefer to work with them, to help them, to cooperate, when I can.”

In spite of himself, Crowley asked, “And if you have to oppose them?”

“That happens, yes. But I make sure to do it, as your angel does, very badly.”

Crowley thought about that, about what Brennan might be saying. He didn’t know how to respond. Finally, face muffled in Brennan’s chest, he muttered, “He’s not _my_ angel.” Even he could hear how petulant he sounded.

Brennan made an impatient noise and cuffed him gently on the back of the head. "Stop arguing."

 _He just cuffed a demon on the head._ Crowley smiled, but said, "I always argue."

“So I see,” Brennan said around a yawn. He stretched luxuriously. "But do you sleep, I wonder?"

Crowley stretched and settled. “You’re impossible.”

“Mmm,” said Brennan. “And sleepy.” He pulled Crowley more tightly against him, and Crowley let himself be held. Over his head, Brennan asked, “Will you be here when I wake up?”

 _No_. “Maybe not.”

“Then _vale_ , gentle daemon.” Brennan’s breathing was already starting to deepen; Crowley almost didn’t have to help him along at all. “I shall remember you warmly.”

“And I, you, Brennan from the north.”

Crowley stayed very still, as Brennan’s breathing slowed and steadied and became a gentle snore. He lay there, feeling the strength of the arms around him and the steady heartbeat under his ear. _So human._ He meant to leave as soon as the soldier was sleeping, but somehow the dawn light was creeping over the window ledge before he finally slithered free of the arms that held him and made his way softly out the door.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley found the Empire to be a very fruitful source of occupation for the next few centuries. The Empire was so wonderfully crowded. The world had so many people in it, now, and so many of them fell under the auspices of Rome.   
> Within Rome's borders, Crowley has grown adept at smelling out petty evils to foster, at finding where they were lurking and drawing them out into the light. There were _so many_ opportunities for humans to become their worst selves. Rather fewer chances for them to show their quality, of course, but there were some who managed to do it all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Content warning: Slavery was commonplace in the Roman Empire, and it is a theme in this chapter. There is mention of many of the associated abuses, including sexual coercion. There are **no** scenes where such abuses take place, and no graphic descriptions, but there are quite specific references to sexual assault,, and to the kind of consequences a slave might face for trying to escape. Nothing on-screen._

Crowley found the Empire to be a very fruitful source of occupation for the next few centuries. The Empire was so wonderfully crowded. The world had so many _people_ in it, now, and so many of them fell under the auspices of Rome. Back when humans had numbered in the hundreds or thousands, Crowley had wanted to hide, to lose himself in the desert. Now he found himself drawn to the cities. It was easy to go unnoticed when around you there were thirty thousand people all trying not to notice anything at all. 

In these teeming anthills of humanity, Crowley was never wanting for petty evils to foster. He grew adept at smelling them out, finding where they were lurking and drawing them out into the light. When people lived on top of one another, even the smallest differences in wealth or status became significant. A whisper here or there, an admiring word to one neighbour about another’s house … The posturing and jockeying that went on between patrons and clients created ample opportunities for humans to become their worst selves. 

_Sometimes it’s too obvious_ , he thought one afternoon. He was outside the house of a rich _eques_ , a landowner and a businessman, in Tolosa where Crowley was living for the time being. The man wore a toga so opulent he could hardly walk from his door to the litter he was carried around in. Holdings all throughout the countryside, and slaves numbering in the hundreds. It hardly took a craftsman to know that his attachment to his wealth was the most direct route to the corruption of his soul. There was practically no more work to be done. 

Crowley could easily leave well enough alone with him, but there on the street in front of his house was a commoner—a freedman, most likely—who stood where the rich man wanted to pass. The man in the litter shouted at him, using language that was not very civil at all, and he had no choice but to step out of the way. The man watched the litter go by with a slight scowl on his face. _Ah._

Crowley fell into step beside him. “Not enough to have the biggest house in the quarter, he’s got to control the streets around it, too.” 

The man looked up, shaken out of his resentful thoughts. “What did you say?”

“I saw what happened!” Crowley let the indignation boil in his tone. “I heard how he spoke to you! I’m asking you, don’t you think with all his money, he could afford a little courtesy?”

“Yeah,” said the man, doubtfully. And then, more confidently, “Yeah! And did you hear what he called me? And this isn’t the first time...” And he was away, giving voice to the bitterness that had clearly been simmering in his soul for some time.

“You’re absolutely right.” Crowley agreed with everything he said. “He’s so greedy, do you know what I heard? I heard he doesn’t trust his own managers not to cheat him, so he gets the takings of his estates sent here. _Sent_ here. _All of it._ Can you imagine? Keeps it right in his house!” And here Crowley slipped in a detail or two— _in his office, you know, in a wooden chest, so he can keep an eye on it while he works_ —that a cleverer man would have thought to question. (Questions like, _how do you know that?_ Just for a start.)

This man, though, was thinking along very different lines. When Crowley took his leave a moment later, the man had already forgotten where his wonderful idea had come from. Crowley could safely walk away.

It didn’t matter if the theft succeeded or not. The _eques_ would be rendered even more paranoid, distrustful and avaricious, and this grasping social climber would be either sentenced to an earthly punishment, or damned to an eternal one. Both, Crowley suspected. 

Two souls for the work of less than five minutes. There was no artistry to it, nor even any challenge, but with the world growing as much as it had, numbers mattered more than finesse. And he needed to build up his numbers if he wanted to be left more or less to his own devices. He had his own interests to pursue.

***

“Come here, boy, I’ve a job for you. There’s a coin in it for you if you’re quick.” No more difficult than that, getting their attention. They almost always came.

Crowley knew how he looked. A freeborn citizen, male, of course, to give him freedom of movement through the streets, comfortably well-off, not terribly ostentatious but the cloth of his toga was well-woven and of evident quality. Simple, nothing to call undue attention to himself, apart from the black, which wasn’t too uncommon anyway—only a little affected, one might say, which Crowley didn’t mind at all. The youths—ruffians, they were, but keen—had no trouble believing he was good for the coin he offered.

Most of them would scamper off the moment their new-found riches had been tucked away out of sight, but some would stay and see if there wasn’t something more they could do for this munificent stranger, in exchange for a rather more valuable coin. There wasn’t; Crowley knew all of what these children knew about the world (though it had taken him considerably longer to learn it) and he had no interest in what the poor and desperate might offer him, driven by need and empty bellies. 

Crowley did have something else to offer them, though. He had to be careful, it was true, but he could see some of what these lads were made of. When he saw what he was looking for, Crowley would talk to them, and perhaps let slip a name, or the name of a discreet shop front, or the kind of word slaves might say to one another when they didn’t want their masters to hear, and then watched to see what this youth or that boy might think of freedom.

 _Freedom._ Even for those who had never tasted it, it was a heavy word—heavy like gold is heavy, like a basket full of sweet, ripe fruit is heavy, like a pitcher full of cool spring water is heavy, before it runs out over dusty skin, between parched lips and down a dry, aching throat. They kept their faces well-schooled, these _pueri_ , having been born to the need for stealth and cunning, but Crowley had been looking into human souls for thousands of years, and he knew when he had found his mark.

“Ask for Gallius Albinus,” he’d murmur. “Tell him Corvus sent you.” And the lad would be off.

***

Servius Gallius Albinus was a weathered freedman, known to Crowley of old. For reasons of his own, which Crowley did not pry into, he had taken it upon himself to offer his help to slaves who wished to seek their freedom. He ran a leatherworking shop, moderately successful, and took care to be exceedingly law-abiding and dull in every possible way. The local authorities (with some encouragement from Crowley) took him to be somewhat simple, but his affairs were well in order and his taxes were paid promptly and in full. They had no reason to scrutinise him any more deeply.

Crowley sought him out, originally to see if he could be corrupted, but very quickly for his own sake. Beneath his reserve, he was wry and witty, and said only what he meant. 

And he was kind. The slaves who were prepared to try their luck would appear, silent and terrified or brash and defiant, at the back of the tiny shop. There they would find a meal and a bed and a steady, gentle bear of a man to give them welcome and comfort, two luxuries they’d mostly lived without for most of their lives. They would also find instructions and supplies to get them through the difficult journey out beyond the reach of Rome and its laws. Crowley had grown to respect him, for his kindness and for the risks he took on for the sake of helping strangers, and to like him.

To _like_ him. The simple pleasure of a talk or a silence shared, of amicable argument, or of hearing one’s own thoughts emerge from another’s mouth. Of having one’s regard borne out and validated, not just for a day or an evening (or a night), but again and again. He lived in the town where Crowley lived, and Crowley _respected_ him. And liked him.

“You can stop looking at me like that, Corvus,” he’d said, early on. “I like you very well indeed, but I’m not taking you to bed.” Plain as plain.

Crowley had smiled, and visited often after that. There were many other pleasures to be had in the man’s company, all rare enough that he knew to value them.

At first it was as a consequence of his friendship with Gallius that he took to spotting those bondsmen who might be willing to chance it, and sending them Gallius’ way. He soon became fascinated with the process for its own sake, and for the sake of those unusual few who chose to undertake it. It was a dangerous choice, the flight from slavery. A thousand things could go wrong, and the consequences were…severe. Somehow, though, the ones Crowley sent always made it to freedom. If asked about that, he would have acted surprised.

It still counted as _making trouble_ , he told himself. (That’s what he told Hell, as well.)

***

“Tempting them with…freedom?” Hastur had said, doubtfully, during one of Crowley’s increasingly rare visits to Hell. The prince and dukes of Hell were all assembled, along with a handful of lesser demons, to hear how their work on earth was progressing. He had just told them his plan.

(Hell still had an inconvenient habit of wanting to know Crowley’s business. It was easier if he mainly told them the truth. But he had been a serpent for four thousand years; there were a great many dishonest things he could do with the truth.)

“Think about it,” he said. “It’s all any of us does anyway, isn’t it? We look into their hearts to find what they desire, and then show them a way to get it, maybe help with the justifying. Then we just...step back and see what they’re willing to do to make it happen.”

“Well, yeah,” Ligur said, “but … We look for greed, or, or, _envy_ , right?” There was a murmur of agreement. “Rage. Hunger for power. _Lust_.” The other demons sneered appreciatively and Ligur grinned around the room. “That’s what we’re about. Not _freedom._ ”

 _Idiot._ “But think of all the souls that it brings into our grasp!” _Steady, Crowley._ “Their master is already ours; the suffering he inflicts on his slaves would have assured it even were it not for the pleasure he takes in inflicting it. With his slave gone, his desire to harm and punish will be stronger than ever. There’s your anger, and he’ll spread it around, right? His wife, his children, his _other slaves…”_ He looked at his audience to see if they grasped how far-reaching it could be. They didn’t. He changed tack: “And, and, look, he _will_ try to get his slave back! He’s rich, he’s powerful! There are laws, there is a system, for finding escaped slaves—they hate giving up what’s theirs. Envy! Gluttony—it’s not just about food! There will be a _reward_ , there’s your greed. The people who want that reward will take measures we could not even imagine in order to get it.” This was true. It had its own terrible elegance. He pulled himself together. “It doesn’t even matter if the fugitive is ever caught … The souls of every single human being who tries to get them back are as good as ours.”

He could see them thinking that over. 

Ligur said, “And then when they’re caught—”

“ _If_ they’re caught—” 

“— _when_ they’re caught, a bit of sport.”

Crowley ignored the sick feeling in his stomach when the jeers and shouts of approval went around the room. He nearly gave himself two tongues again in his effort not to respond.

In the end, they agreed that it was worth a try, and Crowley transported himself back to earth as quickly as he could without arousing suspicion. His first step upon returning was a trip to the public baths. He always felt dirty after a visit to Hell, and it wasn’t just the flies.

***

Before she ever looked at him, before he ever spoke to her, Valeria caught his eye, _seized_ it. Held it. 

She was little more than a child, fourteen years at most, and small, and it galled him, it did, to see children enslaved, and from birth. It didn’t matter how dull and hazily sinful they would become as adults, he still felt it more keenly with the children. With them, there was still a chance, however remote, that they could … change, maybe. A chance that something could kindle in them, where the light in the adults had all but vanished. Sometimes in the children, there was a spark of something that might … catch. 

And thischild, _this_ child was already aflame. The flame was carefully banked, but it smouldered there just beneath the surface. It would take only the barest breath of air to set it roaring into life. She didn’t need him at all; she’d rebel all on her own, given time.

 _And then she’ll die._ Or worse. Wealthy Romans were not merciful with rebellious slaves. She had only to show one little curl of insolence, stint only slightly in carrying out her orders, ask one question too many, and she would be done for. Nothing in Roman law would protect her; her master might as well have been her god.

Crowley could not leave her in slavery.

***

Their first meeting was a disaster, and it was entirely Crowley’s fault.

She was out in the marketplace, not an uncommon occurrence, fetching whatever the cook or the _domina_ had asked for. Crowley had been watching her for some days by that time, and was almost certain she was ready to hear what he had to share. And _look at her_ , so fearless in her element. In the crowded square, some children had shouted to her, and she called back to them, grinning, as she made her way out of the market. _Now._ Crowley didn’t want to wait any more.

She was still smiling when Crowley stepped in front of her, with his usual gambit of having some task …

… and watched her expression clang shut like a fortress gate. 

_What did I say?_ She made to step around him, and Crowley—stupid, _stupid,_ he berated himself later—moved again to block her path, so great was his need to speak to her. 

“Wait, girl. Wait, I just want to—”

“Sir, please,” she spoke in a rush, eyes darting left and right but never once to his face. “I must go, my master—” she cast about, and her very breath was shaking. “My master needs—”

 _She is terrified_ , he realised with a sick lurch. _She thinks I—_

Stammering himself, he tried to explain. “I am, I—I am sorry, you, you mistake me—” 

But she was beyond hearing him, eyes squeezed shut. “Please, sir, please.”

There was nothing to do but move away. “Forgive me,” he said, raising his hands and stepping back. “Forgive me, child. I didn’t think—” _No, you did not_. “You’re safe, child. Forgive me. Go in peace.”

It was another moment before she dared to open her eyes, and by then Crowley had backed several paces away, hands still up, palms out. She saw him, sucked in a gasping breath, and took to her heels.

_Well. That could have gone better._

***

Crowley must have spent too much time posing as a man, to have made an error like that. The guise that left him free to roam the city unquestioned—wealthy, successful, _male—_ was exactly what would make him the greatest danger to Valeria, child that she was, and girl, and slave. It would have been the work of a moment to have altered a few details—a very few details—of his face and dress, and if he’d thought for even an instant, he could have avoided terrifying the poor child.

Perhaps he hadn’t entirely ruined things. She did not get a look at his face, and in her terror likely did not take in too many details of his clothes either. He would wait, and make the necessary adjustments, and try again. 

***

Moving about the city as a woman was a completely different experience. Crowley had to put a great deal of _snake_ back into her face (and teeth) to activate the survival instincts of the men who would accost her. Even so, she did not have access to a great many places or gatherings that she would have taken for granted as a man. It was annoying, but it served her purpose for the moment. 

Her entry into this other world more than made up for it. 

She'd thought she had known what she was missing, when she was a man, but perhaps she hadn’t really. There was a whole plane of communication that went on, often wordlessly, of which the men were completely unaware. Anyone who wasn’t a man learned this without even realizing. Amazing what people could come up with, to keep themselves safe, and carve out a space in which to live. It was like a whole new language, and Crowley learned it with the same intense focus she always gave to the peculiar and wonderful ways humans lived in the world. Soon she was … well. As much like a woman as she’d ever been like a man.

No wonder Valeria had changed faces so abruptly when Crowley first approached her. Crowley understood that now, how wrong she’d been. She knew better now.

It was still a very long time before Valeria would speak to her.

***

Valeria frequented a particular produce stall in the market, run by a woman who had a farm outside the city. The woman was cheerful, and her prices were fair, and she occasionally had an apricot or a fresh carrot to spare for her younger customers. The stall next to her was kept by a dealer of creams and unguents, salves and arcane cures. No one could quite remember how long she’d been there, _but it must have been a while, mustn’t it?_ Oddly, no one felt compelled to dwell on it. There she was, a _nd she’d sold Gaia Drusilla a cream that cleared up the boils on her face, remember how bad they were?_ And what else did they need to know, really?

The woman who ran the stall was given to wearing black, and had flaming red hair. She wore dark lenses over her eyes … perhaps they couldn’t bear too much sun, people with red hair had delicate eyes, often. Her shop was open at odd hours.

Somehow, though, she was always there when Valeria came to call next door, mixing salves or crushing herbs with a pestle, and she smiled at her when their eyes met. Valeria, though cautious, was curious. It wasn’t long before she drifted over from the fruitseller’s to see what this strange neighbour was up to.

“What are you doing?” she asked at first, and Crowley would patiently explain about cutting and bruising and crushing the herbs to release their healing properties.

Then: “What is it for?” And Crowley would speak of sores or ailments of the skin that could be soothed or cured by plants and minerals.

Finally: “What is your name?” And Crowley rejoiced in her heart at having come so far.

“It is Corvus,” she said. Well, it was.

“I have never heard that name before,” the child said doubtfully.

“Very well,” said Crowley evenly, her attention on the powder she was crushing. “My name is Lucia _Marci liberta_ Corvina.”

Valeria looked at her, surprised. “You were a slave?”

“I was, long ago and far away.” She tipped the powder into the small crucible on the workbench. “I am free now.”

“So you chose a new name.” 

“A name that belonged to no one else,” Crowley agreed. She set the crucible on the grill above her small brick oven and laid the tongs by so she could lift it off when it was heated.

Valeria, watching her, frowned. “A raven is bad luck, though.” 

Crowley smiled. “A raven makes her own luck,” she said, reaching for the decoction she would use in her potion. “Corvus is the name I chose for myself; it was not hung on me by any master.”

“Corvus, then.” The girl nodded once, briskly, as if to seal it.

Crowley took a risk: “What name would you choose for yourself, do you think, if you were free?”

There was a brief pause, while Crowley gently poured the liquid into the little clay vessel on the fire, and began to stir. 

Then Valeria said, “I won’t ever be free.”

Crowley’s hands worked steadily and she very carefully did not look up. “Would you like to be?”

She received no reply, and when she finally looked up, her eyes confirmed what she already knew: the girl was gone. But the seed was planted.

***

It was another week before Valeria came back to the vegetable stand. Crowley ignored her, going about her business in her own stall, helping a customer find a tincture for her husband’s foul breath. Ready to catch Valeria’s eye if she should seek it, but otherwise showing no interest at all. 

Her back was turned when she heard a small, determined voice behind her. 

“Valeria _is_ my name.” Crowley looked around to see the child, somewhat pale but feet solidly planted, and if she expected a fight. 

She went on: “Salvia says it’s the name my mother gave me. The master and mistress just call me _girl_. I would keep it, if I were free.” Her set chin tilted up another notch. “And no one would ever take it from me.”

Crowley smiled at her. “It suits you well.” She did not ask who Salvia was. She had already gained so much.

Then it was slow steps and soft degrees and so much _time_ , before Crowley finally came to the point where she could say to the child, _there is a way._ By that time, she thought she wanted Valeria’s freedom as much as the girl herself did.

***

When Valeria finally came to Gallius’ shop, she wasn’t alone. An older girl— _stop calling them children—_ was with her, and she looked none too pleased to be there. She stepped only as far into the room as she had to, and stayed by the door, scowling, with her arms crossed.

“This is Salvia,” Valeria said, stepping all the way into the room and greeting Crowley and Gallius respectfully. “My sister.”

Salvia wasn’t her sister, Crowley could see that all too well, but she inclined her head in greeting to the stony-faced woman. The curt nod she received in return confirmed her impression of Salvia’s distrust and displeasure. Valeria, too, could see that her … sister wasn’t happy, and it clearly made her anxious, but she herself was on fire with eagerness and hope. _Hope_. It existed.

With a small shrug, Crowley introduced them to Gallius Albinus. She trusted him, as she had so rarely trusted the humans that she met. He did not know her for a demon, but he had always taken her as she was. She knew he would do the same for these two. 

(Even when she’d turned up as a woman, he hadn’t really fussed. Only raised an eyebrow at her and asked if her name were still Corvus, or if he was to call her something different now. 

“Still Corvus,” she assured him.

“Fine,” he said. “And I imagine you still cheat at dice, don’t think I won’t be watching.”

And that was that.) 

Gallius began, there in the back room of his leatherwork shop, to outline the plan for getting slaves to freedom (by sea or land, depending on where it was safest for them to go, or if they had their own people somewhere to return to). Valeria listened with fierce concentration, taking in everything he said, and seeing beyond it to freedom. She who had once declared that she would never be free was now ablaze with possibility. She _believed_ this could happen.

Not so with Salvia. She had arrived already closed off and suspicious. As Gallius spoke, Crowley could _see_ Salvia's fury begin to bubble just below the impassive surface. Crowley wondered how she was keeping it in at all. Her hands were curled into fists and her jaw was clenched tight, and she glowered indiscriminately at everyone in the room. Valeria did not seem to notice, so rapt was she for what Gallius was saying, but Crowley lost the thread of Gallius’ words entirely, curious as to when Salvia’s control would finally break.

It came in another moment. Crowley watched it happen.

“As to the risks...” Gallius began, and that’s when the young woman lost her patience completely.

“Yes," she finally seethed from her post by the door. "Tell her about the risks, please. I notice that you put them at the end of the talk, after filling her head with nonsense about freedom and kinfolk.”

Valeria, startled out of her single-minded focus, protested. “It’s not nonsense, Salvia. We could—lots of people have succeeded—”

“And how many have not?” Salvia shot back. She looked at Gallius. “Tell her about the soldiers and rich men who hate nothing more than a runaway slave, a runaway _girl,_ and who will stop at nothing to get her back. Tell her about what happens to a young girl caught having escaped her master, even before she is returned.”

Gallius spoke. “The risks are great, there’s no doubt—”

“ _The risks are not yours._ Sir _._ ” Salvia’s face was flushed and she practically spit her words at him. “I see no collar about your neck and no brand upon your face. They will _rape her_ , sir, they will _maim her_ and _scar her_ and she will be sold as damaged goods and even if she lives she will _never be the same again_.” She took a step or two toward him, in her anger, before she stopped herself. She took a breath. Her words cut, straight and deep. “If she is caught, _you_ might get to try again next week with a different slave, a desperate one, and perhaps that one will get through. For her, all will be lost.” 

_For her_ , Crowley noted. Not _for us_. Salvia saw escape for Valeria only. Crowley wondered if Valeria noticed. 

Valeria was staring, open mouthed and shocked. “Salvia, I—” She was near to weeping.

“You knew I was against this, Valeria,” Salvia snapped. “You asked me to come and hear them, and I have. I have not changed my mind. The risk is too great.”

Crowley spoke up. “And what about the risk of staying? How safe is she, at her age, in your master’s house, and for how long?” Her implication was clear. Valeria would not be a child for much longer.

“I will keep her safe,” Salvia hissed. "I always have."

Crowley looked at her. “And how safe are you?” 

Salvia’s eyes went hard and furious. She would refuse to answer rather than lie, but her silence was answer enough. Finally she said, “I have told you what I think, and I have duties to see to.” She made for the door. 

Valeria said, in a rush, “The master has promised to free her.” She was addressing Crowley and Gallius, but her eyes did not leave her friend.

Salvia stopped short at her words, but did not turn. “Valeria, be quiet.”

She raised her chin. “I will not. Corvus has already seen how it is.” She turned to Crowley. “He said he will free her when she bears him a son.”

Crowley felt the words like a physical blow. She had already known the truth of it, just looking at Salvia’s face, but it turned her stomach to hear it said aloud, and from Valeria’s lips. 

The girl went on. “But the mistress, she gets a draught from the midwife, and makes her drink it every month. Sometimes it makes her sick, but it always…” Here she glanced at Gallius. This was not something to be spoken of around men.

Gallius said, “You cannot shock me, child. I spent my youth in bondage. I know too well how a slave may be used by her master. Or his master.” Crowley did not look at him. She hadn’t known much about his past, but she was well able to recognise pain when she saw it; pain that Gallius, at least, had wrought into kindness.

“Salvia does protect me,” Valeria said. “But she can’t do it forever. And even if she bears a son—which the mistress would never permit—what will she do then? Take her freedom and leave her baby?” She looked at Salvia, and her eyes were full. “She would never really be free.”

The truth of this statement filled the room, leaving no space for speech. Crowley looked at Salvia, and then at Valeria, and could feel them slipping away. There was nothing she could say to stop it.

"We could escape," Valeria said. "Both of us. Now, before any of that happens. Then you'd be safe. We both would." She looked at Salvia, as if she could make her agree by will alone.

“Safe...or dead.” Salvia had her own will, that much was clear. “I’m leaving,” she said. “You must make your own choices.”

She pushed aside the shutter on the door, and was gone. Valeria stared after her, lost.

“I thought—I thought she’d want to. I thought she’d see…” Her eyes remained fixed on the door, as though she expected to find her answers there. “I didn’t know she was so … fearful.”

“She’s afraid for you,” Crowley pointed out. There wasn’t a great deal more that could happen to Salvia, that she wasn’t already suffering. “She believes you’ll be safer if you stay.” _She is mistaken,_ Crowley added silently _._ Aloud, she said, “She only wants to protect you.”

“I want to be free,” Valeria said. “But if I have to abandon her to her fate?” Here she did look, pleadingly, at Crowley. “If I leave, she’ll be alone there. She _needs_ me.”

 _Need? All you are is a witness,_ Crowley thought bitterly, but didn’t say. “There is no good that you can do her,” she said instead. “If she will not come, you cannot help her. Even if you stay by her side.”

“You must decide,” Gallius said, kind but bluntly honest. “You must choose for yourself, if she will not come with you.” 

Valeria gave him a stricken look. “All right, yes.” Her expression settled, became firm. “I know.” 

There was little more to say after that. Crowley and Gallius stood gazing at the door in silence for several long moments after she had gone. 

At last, Gallius said, “It is a risk, letting her leave. If too many people know what we’re about.” He said it as an afterthought, and Crowley knew that was not his real concern.

It wasn’t a concern at all, as far as Crowley was concerned. “They won’t speak of it to anyone who could hurt us,” she said. _They wouldn’t be able to,_ she added mentally. It was a small curse, and a harmless one, and she was a demon, after all.

***

There was plenty for Crowley to do. In Tolosa, where she was, and in every part of the Empire, and in every part of the world adjacent to the Empire, and actually everywhere in the world full stop. She ought to be checking on the Huns, at least. But Valeria’s thin, pale, indomitable face gave her no peace, and when the girl did not come back to Gallius’ shop, nor to the fruitseller’s stall, by the end of the week, she sought her out.

Valeria was in the kitchen garden, where no one from outside the household had any reason to be. Crowley went there anyway. She stood in the corner, in the shade, and made herself unseen to all but the girl. She saw Valeria’s eyes go wide when she spotted her.

“You should not be here,” she whispered, frightened.

“They shall not see me,” Crowley told her. “I needed to speak to you.”

Valeria bent her head to her task, briskly snapping a pea pod from its vine. She said, more forcefully this time, “You should not be here.”

“ _Neither should you,”_ Crowley hissed. “Yet here you are. Why have you not yet made a choice?”

Valeria looked at her, then, affronted. “I _have_ made my choice,” she said coldly. “I go nowhere without Salvia.”

“And when she dies?” Despair made Crowley cruel. “From the purges, or at the hand of the master or mistress, or in childbed…? What will you do then?”

“I go nowhere,” she repeated, steady, “without Salvia.”

At once Crowley saw her meaning. _And where Salvia goes, I go._ Whether it be to the market, or into death. And Salvia wouldn’t consider escape because she thought— _wrongly, so wrongly_ —that Valeria was safer here. _Hell._ Each cared only for the safety of the other, and any simpleton could see the bond there was between them. Noble and useless. It would destroy them both.

“I did not take you for a fool, girl.” Crowley was too defeated to put much sting in her words. “You have a choice here.”

“I’ve _made_ my choice,” Valeria said again. “I _choose_ to not abandon my sister.”

“She’s not your sister,” Crowley said, hopelessly.

Valeria stared at her. After a moment, she said, “Once I envied you your freedom, Corvus. Salvia _is_ my sister, my more-than-sister, whoever her mother was. We are together, or we are no one.” She gave a sad smile. “If you truly don’t understand that, then I pity you.”

Crowley left. There was nothing else to do. The folly of humans was a thing to be marvelled at, no mistake. How could they hope to survive, she wondered, being so visibly bound together? Each so obvious a weakness for the other? Each so willing to sacrifice, to put herself in danger, to lose _everything,_ all for the sake of this one other person? It made them so, so _vulnerable._ So easy to control. So easy to keep in bondage. 

_If you truly don’t understand_ , she’d said, and Crowley didn’t. Couldn’t. No demon would ever make a mistake like that. Nor any angel, either. Neither Heaven nor Hell would hesitate to use such a love, even against one of their own. The only safety, the only _freedom,_ was in solitude. Crowley was well accustomed to solitude by now, and was glad of it. 

_We are together, or we are no one._ Such a lofty, stupidly human notion. As if it could ever be true, for anyone. She shook her head at these two fools, and washed her hands of them.

The next day she made her farewells to Gallius and went to see to her business among the Visigoths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apart from an improbable number of Wikipedia articles, and a great many overviews of slavery in the Roman Empire, there was one resource that was incredibly valuable to me for this chapter, and that was [ORBIS, the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World](http://orbis.stanford.edu) which is a sort of Google Maps trip planner for ancient Rome. It makes my nerdy heart sing, and it helped me make sure what I was writing was at least conceivable. For interested parties, the voyage from Toulouse (Tolosa) to Durnovaria (Dorchester, on the south coast of Britain) would take between ten days to two weeks, depending on the time of year.  
> Also, I have been assured that the name Corvus wouldn't be any stranger for a woman than for a man, and that there was no need to change it to something like _Corva_ or _Corvina_ , neither of which felt right for the character. I also liked the idea of there being minimal changes associated with Crowley's shift in gender presentation.
> 
> Thank you for reading this far! We've come to the point I knew was inevitable, where I can't predict at all when the next chapter will be posted. In fairness, this one is quite long! Plus, I've just come off a 4 day Fic Writers' Retreat (this was it's fourth year) and I'm on fire with motivation and energy. That I got this chapter finished this week is largely due to that retreat. We'll see how we go from here.
> 
> A huge thank you as always to my betas, Siemejay and Silvergirl, who have by now, I hope, forgiven me for the lack of action between Crowley and Gallius, even though they started shipping them hard only a few paragraphs in. They provided me with sharp-eyed editing, thoughtful questions and suggestions, and enough keysmashes and exclamation marks to keep me going. 
> 
> Comments fuel my writing engine and are most welcome. <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It weighed on Crowley, leaving the slave girls to their fate in Tolosa. Their kind of bondage was civilization at its most brutal. And it _still_ pretended to be good, to be orderly, with laws and courts and manners...Crowley was sick of it, and went to seek a place where the barbarism was more honest. 
> 
> Barbarism, violence, atrocity...these were the proper focus for a demon anyway. Crowley needed to accept that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thousand times to Silvergirl for her fast and thoughtful beta. 
> 
> See the end notes for translations of place names and historical notes.

For the first while after her precipitous departure from Tolosa, Crowley’s only concern was being _gone_. She didn’t think about Gallius, she didn’t think about Valeria, she certainly didn’t examine her reasons for getting out of there. She walked, and remembered that she was a demon above all. The people she met were suddenly endowed with unusually good survival instincts and gave her a wide berth. It would not have gone well for them otherwise.

She had been too long in one place, and civilization—a lie, she knew it was a lie—had thickened around her, and drawn tight like dying skin. Time to slough it off and leave it behind.

She fell in with a company Visigoth _foederati_ , fighters paid to swell the ranks of the Legions in an Empire spread too thin. Mercenaries whose loyalty was bought and paid for, withdrawn as soon as there was profit elsewhere. This, she could understand.

She needed no trickery to convince Hell that this was the right sort of crowd for her. Beelzebub waved her off with impatience:

“Soldiers, fine, mercenaries, good. Bored. Armed. Violent. You could have had them sacking a whole defenseless village in the time it took you to make this report. Get up there and do your job.”

With her flaming red hair, also, it was not difficult to pass herself off as one of them. When she approached the women of the camp to secure herself a place, a small child actually mistook her for its auntie.

“No, darling,” she said, bending to the child with a winning smile. “Your auntie is over there. Take my hand and we’ll go find her, if you like.” Kindness to children was a ready way to win people’s trust; she was very gentle with the little fingers that curled into her hand.

She soon found her feet among the camp followers, and settled in.

In a company such as this, where campaigns lasted months and years, fighters and families travelled closely together and Crowley’s job was easy. Wrath and pride, sloth and envy, lust of course...each sin was like a strand in a web; Crowley was ready to tug on the silk if she had to, but she rarely did. She just watched it all unfold.

(Increasingly, her interference in everyday human affairs was becoming irrelevant. Any time a crowd of humans gathered together for any length of time, atrocity and evil were almost assured. Commendations for work she’d had no part in arrived quite regularly, and she learned not to examine them too closely. They made for rather distasteful reading.)

Crowley let herself shut off a little, floating in the swirl and flow of this particular pool of humanity. There was work to be done, cooking and washing and tending to the ill and injured. She took little notice of where they were marching, or who they were fighting for, or who their enemies were. These were idle questions. In an army whose allegiance was a tradable commodity, it didn’t do to get too attached to this banner or that standard.

 _What is this place called again?_ Someone might well ask, but only idly, over a cooking fire.

_Don’t know. Illyricum, maybe. Heading to Italy next, though._

_Italy? I thought we were meant to defend the borders against a barbarian invasion!_

_Look around; we **are** the barbarian invasion._

_Hah, keep up! That was last week. We’re loyal Romans now._

_Yeah, for the next five minutes._

Rumours were rife; it was hard to keep track.

Later, she reflected that she really ought to have known better. Perhaps she’d spent too much time within Rome’s borders, and had apparently absorbed the common, incorrect, and dangerous belief that _vast_ and _powerful_ meant the same thing as _permanent._

 _Empires always fall._ Crowley knew this, knew it from millennia of human history. _They have beginnings, and heights, and collapses. They overreach their power, and swallow whole nations, and tell them they are part of something greater. That they are citizens, almost—never entirely, but almost—as good as real ones. But they always have desires, those new nations, those new citizens, and never just do what they’re told, and they always cost more than anyone thinks they’re going to, and require things like food and security and respect. Then those empires try to spit them out again, and think that that will save them. It never does._

She ought to have known it was coming. She ought to have berated every barbarian leader and soldier and mother and told them _never believe that the power that uses your flesh to win its wars is on your side._ She ought to have tried harder to sow suspicion and foment rebellion and uprising. At the very least, she shouldn’t have let them bring their children with them. No one knew better than she did: that level of trust never went unpunished.

History would fail to record how many women and children were slaughtered there at Ticinum, how many physicians, how many weavers, how many singers of sagas. Crowley, though, kept an unflinching tally.

The next shift in power turned the _foederati_ into objects of deep suspicion. And not just the warriors, but their families, following the camps—that was where they were most vulnerable, after all. When the massacres began, it took Crowley...well, not _by surprise_ as such, massacres were never really a surprise, when order was crumbling _._ No, she was unprepared, but not surprised.

Nor was it a surprise when the barbarians—an unruly confederation of distantly related tribes, much given to in-fighting—united in their grief and outrage. The Legions were emptied of their barbarians, and the Visigoths marched on Rome. Even the Emperor should have seen it coming.

Crowley didn’t go with them. There was nothing she could do that would rival what these humans would do to each other. It was inevitable now; there was no need for her to be there.

Crowley’s superiors were more than satisfied with her work in bringing about the ruin of the Western Empire. She received her commendations and thought of the murdered children in Ticinum, and carefully did not name the cold sludge that oozed and sucked around her stomach.

Civilization was indeed a lie, but it was a comforting one. She was most of the way back to the Pyrenees before she admitted to where she was heading.

***

Back in Tolosa, Gallius’ shop was as quietly prosperous as it ever was. The Roman and romanized citizens of Tolosa had not seen many material changes to their daily lives. Most of them, Visigoths themselves, had seen no reason to resist. Closer to the capital, there was no mistaking that an Empire was crumbling; here, though, Crowley could hardly see a difference.

“My taxes go to a king instead of an emperor,” Gallius said, swirling his clay cup of sweetened wine. “Otherwise there _is_ no difference.”

The two were warm together on their stools by Gallius’ hearth. He’d greeted her with joy and invited her for dinner, and she had settled gratefully into the warmth and welcome. Now they took their ease in the evening, talking. Or Gallius was talking; Crowley mostly smiled or made encouraging noises, and the old leatherworker grew more voluble as the evening wore on.

“I hear Rome itself was not as fortunate as Tolosa,” he added.

“I heard that as well.” Crowley saw no need to relate the details of her time in Italy. What she had seen there was vivid behind her eyes, but there was no call to spoil the peace of the evening. “Here, though, the town seems prosperous.”

“And so it shall be,” Gallius agreed, “so long as the rich men don’t get too fussy about who collects their taxes.”

“Seems unlikely,” Crowley observed.

Gallius laughed, but there was an edge to it. “No, you’re quite right. They have their clients and their slaves and their spectacle at the arena, and they’re well-fed. What do they care who maintains the aqueduct?”

“Yes,” Crowley said, for it was true. “So long as there are slaves to keep the baths.”

“Oh!” Here Gallius almost shouted. “Talking of slaves, I had meant to tell you, if you came back this way, but I forgot, of course, it’s been three...maybe four years since, it went out of my head until just now…” Crowley looked at him; he didn’t usually _prattle._ “The girl, the little firebrand, you remember, and her stalwart guardian, what were their names…?”

Crowley went very still. _After all this time._ A firebrand and a stalwart guardian? There was no one else it could be. The pleasure drained out of the evening. “Valeria,” she said. “And Salvia.”

If Gallius thought it was odd that she remembered so readily, he didn’t mention it. “Yes,” he said. “The very ones.”

“Well?” Crowley steeled herself; she knew what must be coming. They were dead, they must be dead, or sold, or...

“Well, it was, oh, must have been more than a year after you left, I don’t—well, it must have been, at least a year, maybe two, because the child that you had brought to me was a child no longer, at least not to a man’s eye.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t need to explain _that_ to you.”

“No,” she said. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. But of course she had to know, now. “So?”

“I would never have thought it. It was the older one, Salvia, the one who came in already spitting mad, that time, and handed me my head for putting the little one in danger, you remember?”

“I remember.” Crowley smiled, though the memory was bitter now.

“She came to see me one day, stepped through my door and stood as stiff as a rail before me. ‘We have to leave,’ she told me, just like that, sure as anything. ‘We?’ I asked her, though I remembered her face well enough. ‘My sister and me,’ she told me—they were still sticking with the _sisters_ story, which is no bother to me—”

Crowley had stopped breathing at some point. “They left?” She steadied her voice and asked again, “They _left_?”

“They did,” he said, simply. “Never balked once. If anything the older one was more determined than the younger. They went together, in a caravan to Burdigala.”

“Burdigala? They went west? That’s not—”

“You would have had them go east, perhaps to Rome?” he asked, mildly, and of course Crowley saw his point, but— “But you needn’t worry, my friend. They were going on, from there, by sea…”

“To _where?_ ” Where on earth was there for them to go?

Gallius raised an eyebrow. “How long _were_ you in Rome, Corvus? You’ve begun to think like them. There exists a world beyond the _mare nostrum_ , you know. It is not, in fact, the center of the universe.”

 _And well I ought to know it_ , thought Crowley. But she said, “Forgive me. You’re right, they are better off in the lands the Romans consider barbarous. Tell me, then. Where did they go?”

“To Britannia,” he told her, gesturing northwards with his cup. “Salvia’s mother, apparently, had some people there, among the Cornovii. She knew very little about them, but enough that I think she may find them. Word did come back that they were well when they left the ship at Durnovaria.”

The news was...good. _Good, hah._ Unlooked for, unexpected, and completely wonderful. She’d been so sure that the worst had happened. She was glad, all over again, that she’d come to see Gallius, and that he was a good man. She took a deep breath and allowed herself a smile.

“Gallius,” she asked, “ _Why_ did they go? What changed her mind? Did she tell you?”

“I already said.” Gallius took another swallow of his wine, and turned his eyes towards the hearth. “Valeria was not a child any longer. Salvia had held the master’s focus for years, and worked hard to do so, but now...”

Crowley nodded, her eyes, too, turning towards the low fire. “She would have risked everything to keep the girl safe.”

“She _did_ risk everything,” Gallius pointed out. “And so did Valeria. I have never seen such devotion, as with those two.”

“Nor have I,” Crowley murmured. “I thought it a weakness.” She glanced at her friend. “I thought you were going to tell me—I thought it would be the death of them both.”

“Well,” said Gallius slowly, trying (it seemed) for tact, “You may be forgiven for thinking so. You are very solitary.”

 _You do not have the least idea,_ Crowley thought, but she laughed easily enough, and agreed. She found she was full of goodwill. She could just barely remember what that felt like. “Except when I am sharing a cup of wine with an old friend.” She let her warm gaze rest on him.

He burst out laughing. “You’re giving me that look again,” he said. “I am still not sharing my bed with you, Corvus, any more than when you were a man. I am immune to such wiles.”

Crowley smiled, unoffended, even pleased, and spread her hands in an expansive shrug. “I will be content with food and fellowship, then, friend Gallius,” she said. “That has always been enough for me, with you. I consider myself fortunate.” Then her smile turned wry and she added, “Though my wiles are generally thought to be compelling.”

He laughed again, at that, and refilled her cup, and said, “I do not doubt it.”

“Thank you,” she told him then. “It is good news. They would still be in bondage, or worse, but for you.”

“There is nothing worse than bondage,” he said, somber, but he raised his cup in acknowledgement all the same, and they drank together.

***

They talked well into the night, and it was coming up toward dawn when Crowley finally stood, and stretched, and began to make her goodbyes.

“Will you be staying, then?” he asked, walking to the door with her, “Set up your stall again?”

“I had thought I might,” she said, hesitating, “But now I think perhaps I’ll move on.”

“Ah,” he said. “To Britannia, I presume.”

“Britannia?” she exclaimed, feigning horror. “There aren’t even any Legions there anymore. What would I do in such a backwater?” They shared a smile. “I admit,” she said, “I’d like to see them prospering. I had got fond of them, you see.”

“Not such a secret, Corvus,” said Gallius. “You always get fond of them.”

 _What?_ “That’s not—”

He held up a hand. “I won’t tell anyone.” There was a smile in his eyes, which rankled, but Crowley let it pass.

It was time to leave. “Thank you, Gallius Albinus, for everything you’ve done. May you live in peace and in health, and good fortune be to your house.” Crowley had become adept at blessings that did not invoke a deity.

Gallius smiled. “And all blessings be upon you as well. I will not look to see you again, but you will always be welcome here.”

They embraced, and kissed in the manner of men who esteem one another highly, a kiss between equals, and parted ways. Crowley carefully set Gallius Albinus in amongst those few who, over the centuries, had considered her a friend, and then set her face and her feet towards the western sea.

***

Crowley liked sea travel slightly less than she liked travel by donkey, which she abominated. She’d been waiting a long time for the humans to invent more salubrious mode of transportation. Just a little smoother or less inclined to bounce or lurch, would that be too much to ask? She’d feel obliged to wreck it for them, of course; it was her purpose here, to cause trouble. She’d then have to find ways to slither out of the inconveniences she herself created. A dilemma, certainly.

Standing on the deck of the little Basque vessel while crossing the stretch of open water between Armorica and Britannia, she thought she wouldn’t mind suffering a multitude of those inconveniences if it meant she never had to sail again. Perhaps she’d stay in Britain until the humans learned how to fly.

***

Gallius Albinus had given her all of the information that Salvia had shared with him before leaving, that she was hopeful would lead her to her mother’s people. It was helpful, but not actually necessary. For all that Crowley travelled the same way that humans did (she never knew when the opportunity for mischief might arise), she had her own ways of finding a single soul—or two—among thousands.

She tracked west with confidence, following a good road to Isca with a company of pilgrims—Christians, these were. Christianity had been all the style for well over a century now, no wild beasts in the arena for such as these, and the only crosses they would see were decorative. Crowley had watched the Emperors adopt this peasant’s religion and wondered what that young man would have said, if she’d been able to show him _that_ kingdom. Show him the rich and cruel and powerful men who ruled and conquered in his name. Still, there was an earnestness to these lowly pilgrims that kept Crowley from applying herself too diligently to their moral undoing as they travelled.

The further west and north she went, the fewer signs she saw that the Romans had ever been here, though they had not been gone much more than a decade. The clothes and hair and weapons she saw on the people here in Dumnonia, and their mannerisms, too, reminded her, somehow, of Brennan the soldier from all those years ago. It was easy to slip into their patterns of speech, and she was able enough to slant her Latin to fit the usage of these parts. By the time she’d trekked inland from the coast to the hills west of the high moors, she could speak to anyone she met, more or less.

It was another two days of travel from Isca to the hamlet by the woods where Salvia’s people dwelt. Crowley didn’t stay at the nearest inn, but passed right on across the small stream and through the sparse trees at the edge of the wood to a small stone cottage with a thriving garden, surrounded by a little stick fence. There was a woman in the garden, digging or weeding, and she looked up at the sound of Crowley’s greeting.

“Bright blessings be upon you, stranger,” she said, rising to her feet and shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun.

“And upon you,” Crowley returned. “But I am not a stranger, I hope,” she said, stepping to the side so that her face could be seen despite the glare. “Hello, Salvia.”

Salvia looked blankly at her for a moment, then gave a start. “You.”

“Me,” Crowley agreed.

They looked at each other for several moments. In all her journey to this place, Crowley did not think beyond her own desire to see for herself that these women were safe. She never considered what her welcome might be. As she watched the feelings flit swiftly across Salvia’s face in the silence that held between them, she was suddenly afraid that her presence might be...harmful, in some way. Crowley was a demon. And they had not parted on good terms.

She said, “If my presence disturbs you, I will go. I am not here to cause trouble.”

Salvia, at that, resolved her expression into a wry smile. She didn’t look away from Crowley’s face, but turned her head a little, and called out. “Valeria!” She waited a moment, then called again, “Valeria!”

“What?” came a muffled shout from behind the house.

“Clean the guts off your hands and come to the garden. We’ve a visitor,” she said. “Who is not here to cause trouble.”

A moment later, a young woman came around the corner of the house, wiping her hands on a rough, filthy cloth, and frowning. “What on earth are you going on ab—” And then she saw Crowley.

Crowley stared. She’d been such a skinny little girl, all bones and angles, and short, and now...well, she was still not tall, but her angles had smoothed into muscle and her shoulders under her tunic were straight and strong. She looked like a young soldier, or like soldiers used to look when there was food enough for all, and she moved with the same strength and sureness. She looked... _She looks free,_ Crowley thought. As if freedom could be seen in a spare, straight neck and firm booted feet.

Gathering her wits, she bowed courteously. “Domina Valeria,” she said. “You look well.”

“Corvus,” the young woman said, and her face was unreadable. “I never thought to see you again.”

“I needn’t stay—” she began, but Valeria cut her off.

“No,” she said, suddenly decisive. “Forgive me, I am only shocked to see you. You are welcome here. _Most_ welcome. Even if you’re here to cause trouble—”

“I’m not, I said I’m not—”

“—I have reason to be grateful for the kind of trouble you cause. It would be churlish of me to complain of it now.”

Crowley laughed a little. There was plenty the girl could accuse her of. “You are very kind.”

There was a short pause. Then Valeria seemed to shake herself. “I, uh—” She looked around, and then down at her own hands, which were still not very clean, despite her efforts. “Salvia, if you don’t mind, my hands...could you make our guest welcome...perhaps, uh…?”

Ever the more collected of the two, Salvia smiled. She wiped the garden soil from her hands with her apron and stepped through the little gate that marked the entrance to her garden. With a gesture, she led Crowley to a bucket that stood on a stone bench by the door of the cottage and dipped a cup in, then handed the dripping vessel to Crowley for her to drink.

“I bid you welcome, Corvus, to our home,” she said, formally. “It must have been a long journey that brought you here.”

Crowley smiled, taking the cup. “I do not mind a long journey,” she said, around her swallow of water. “I could have done without the time at sea, though.”

Salvia laughed. “Yes, it does take some people that way. Valeria struggled, as well.” She accepted the cup back from Crowley and lifted the bucket down from the bench. “Will you sit down? It is a shame to waste the sunshine, sitting inside. We get it so rarely.” She looked up doubtfully. “Although, perhaps, your eyes…?”

“My eyes will stand a little watery northern sunlight,” she said, settling down on the stone bench with her back resting against the wall of the house. “It is nothing to what you get in Italy.”

“Italy?” Valeria asked in surprise. “I wondered. I never saw you again in Tolosa.”

“No, that’s true. I left soon after the last time we spoke.” _Left_ , Crowley said. Not _fled_.

“It’s sure to be a long story,” Valeria declared. “And I would like to hear it. I don’t...look, I’ve rabbit guts all over my arms. Sit there for a bit, and drink, and rest, and I’ll finish up back there, and then—”

“And then you’ll join us for a meal,” Salvia cut in, “and, I hope, accept our hospitality for the night at least.”

“I would be most honoured,” Crowley said, and took another sip of cool water.

***

They were good company, these two young women. It was strange to see the change in them. Some of it was age, of course. Some of it was no longer being enslaved. Some of it was...Crowley couldn’t say exactly. A different sort of freedom, perhaps. The things that had hurt them were a long way away.

They fell into a communal kind of rhythm, sharing the tasks. Crowley saw to the roasting meat by the hearth, Valeria prepared the greens at the simple wooden table, and Salvia saw to the rest, broth and bread and plates to eat off. There was a kind of harmony around these two women, in the ebb and flow of their life together, that was not disturbed by the presence of an outsider; indeed, it easily opened and eddied around her, drawing her in, making her welcome. Their love was almost visible in the space they shared. Crowley was no longer an angel, with an angel’s affinity for love, but _this_ love was so present she could almost feel it, like mist—gentle, cool and gentle—against her skin. She hadn’t felt its like in a long, long time. She doubted she ever would again.

“You seem to have a fine life here,” she commented, as she gave the spitted rabbits another turn over the hearthfire.

“We do,” Salvia agreed, setting the pot of broth on a hot stone. “Between our garden and the woods, we have most of what we need. The rest we trade for in the village.” She placed a wooden bowl of cut bread on the table. “We didn’t find my mother’s family, in the end—many of them were taken when she was, we think. But we’re fine. The folks hereabouts treat us as though we belong. We’ve all the family we need.”

The two women shared a smile that confirmed what Crowley already knew, and made her heart ache a little. She busied herself in checking the rabbit and, finding it done, lifted it away from the flames and onto the board Salvia had laid out for it.

“As you say, I did not expect to see you again,” she said, finally, taking up the kitchen knife to carve apart the joints. “I believed—forgive me—that you would die in Tolosa. When Gallius told me what happened...it wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“I was quite adamant when last we met,” Salvia reminded her.

“You were, and so was Valeria.” Crowley hesitated, her eyes on the meat as she piled it onto a platter. “Did she—Valeria, did you…?” She looked from one questioning face to the other. “I went to see Valeria once more, after that night at Gallius Albinus’ shop, did she tell you?” To Valeria: “May I speak of it?”

Valeria shrugged, picking up the stems that littered the table, unconcerned. Of course they did not keep secrets from one another.

Crowley sat down at the table on the stool Salvia had indicated, and accepted a plate. “I wanted to get her to see sense,” she said. “To make her own escape if you wouldn’t come with her.”

Salvia stared at him, a bowl in her hands. “She wouldn’t,” she said, as if it should have been obvious.

Crowley rolled her eyes. “Of _course_ she wouldn’t. It was _maddening_.”

Valeria, coming back to the table, caught a fond look from Salvia. “I’m sorry I upset you,” she said to Crowley, sounding utterly unrepentant.

Crowley shot her a look, then turned back to Salvia. “Do you know what she said to me?”

Salvia smiled, “Something terribly impolite, no doubt.” She took her place at the table.

“No,” said Crowley. “Although I’m sure she was thinking it.” She let her gaze settle somewhere in the middle of the table, but she wasn’t seeing their meal. Instead, a skinny girl in a garden scowled at her. “She said, _we are together, or we are no one_.” Crowley tasted the words again as she said them, and remembered the look of pity the young slave girl had given her then. “I have never forgotten it.”

Salvia smiled at that. She did not appear surprised.

A thoughtful silence settled around the table as Valeria sat. Dusk was falling outside, but inside there was the glow of the fire and the light of a lamp on the windowsill. On the table was a bowl of bread, a platter of roasted rabbit meat, and a small basket of fresh greens, neatly trimmed. There were also three bowls in a stack, and an empty plate before each member of the company, waiting to be filled. Crowley kept her eyes down and let the silence stretch.

It came as a shock when she heard Salvia’s voice begin a prayer:

“Bless us, O Lord...” Her eyes were closed and her head was bowed, so she did not see Crowley startle and stare. “And these, thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.” She raised her head then, and reached for the bread, which she passed to Crowley, who had just enough presence of mind to take it from her hands.

The comfortable clatter as food was passed and served allowed Crowley to cover her discomfiture. When she looked at her plate again, she found that there was meat there, to go with the bread, and in her cup was a rich smelling cider.

She was thankful for the rituals of preparing and sharing out food. Those rituals had never changed much, not in thousands of years. Humans took their food seriously, and were scrupulous about what it meant to share it. It was a kindness when they did. It meant something. That was what made it worthwhile; she rarely bothered to eat when she was alone. She was doubly grateful for these rituals here, at this table, as it gave her something to do with her hands.

“Salutaria,” she said, raising her cup. “To your good health, both of you. I am grateful for your hospitality.”

With their own cups, they accepted her toast, and set to eating. Crowley got through two mouthfuls before she gave in. She had never, not since the beginning of the universe, managed not to ask questions.

“Were you...always a, a Christian?”

Salvia smiled—she smiled so easily now. “No, that is new.”

She was happy to explain. It seemed there was a community of women further west, towards Kerniw. They’d assembled there, but they came from other places, some from Gwent or Dyfed, others from across the western sea in Hibernia. They’d established themselves in the south and west of Dumnonia, in the traditional lands of the Cornovii (“My mother’s father was from there,” she said), and the wells from the sites where they lived had begun to flow with healing water. When they travelled, which they did in groups of three or four, they carried vessels of the holy water with them, and performed miracles wherever they went.

 _Miracles, is it? Healing wells? I wonder,_ Crowley thought. But it didn’t do to get...whatever she was getting. Suspicious. Aziraphale could be anywhere in the world. And anyway, miracles were not solely the province of angels; humans very often performed miracles themselves with no divine (or infernal) interference whatsoever, solely on the strength of their own belief. _It doesn’t matter anyway,_ she told herself sternly, and attended again to Salvia.

Salvia had met a group of these travellers while she’d still been searching for her mother’s clan. She’d been profoundly affected by the experience.

“Because they were healers?” Crowley asked.

“Because they were _women_.” Salvia caught herself then, leaning across the table, fingers spread and eyes wide, and settled back a little. “They travel freely, Corvus. They wait for no man’s permission. There was a man, a monk, I think, who travelled with them, and he wasn’t a servant, or a slave, he was a teacher, too, but he...he _listened_ to the women. They would heal and speak to people, teach them, and people asked them questions—men asked them questions—and they would answer, and the men would listen.”

“That _is_ a miracle,” said Crowley with a grin, and Valeria laughed.

“Yes,” she said. “At least as much as rising from the dead.”

Salvia took their teasing with a smile, but her face took on a stubborn look, and she sat forward again. “You may laugh, but you were both slaves, like I was. When did any man care what you might _say_?” Crowley and Valeria both sobered at that, and Salvia went on. “But it wasn’t just that. It was...this man, this Jesus. If there was something in what he said that makes men gentle, and women bold, and puts healing in the hands of those who follow him...Well? What mere human could do _that?”_

 _Any human,_ thought Crowley. _Any human could, with no warning whatsoever, and no way to predict who might do it until it was done. Anyone could._ But she had to admit that most of them wouldn’t, and hadn’t.

“I never heard of a Roman god who told a slave that she was worth something,” Salvia said. “These women preach kindness, and compassion, and charity.” She sat back, at last, in her chair. “That is what they taught me.”

“You were already kind and compassionate and charitable,” Valeria told her. Crowley got the feeling they’d had this conversation before.

Crowley asked Valeria, “Are you a Christian now, too?”

“No.” Valeria exchanged a glance with her companion. “I don’t—I don’t think it’s in me to have that kind of faith. In, in a god, or in miracles, or in some sort of eternal life.” She laughed a little. “I was there with Salvia when she first heard them, and she was so...so enraptured. Well, you were,” she said to Salvia, “You know you were.” She turned back to Crowley. “And all I could think was, _how do you know, how do you really know? Explain it, show it to me, prove it._ Yes, _prove it._ ” She smiled ruefully. “And of course they couldn’t have, and I didn’t ask them, anyway, because Salvia—Well. But Salvia can do that, can...take things on faith if they seem right to her. She doesn’t need to...know everything. To doubt everything.”

“Is there nothing that you believe in?” Crowley asked her, curious.

“Of course,” said Valeria, simply. Her eyes shone. “I believe in Salvia.”

Crowley looked from her to the other woman, to see what she thought of this heresy. Salvia’s grey eyes were cast down, but a pleased flush had risen in her face, not at all like someone whose faith was being challenged.

The Salvia looked up and asked, as if it were nothing, “Do you believe in God, Corvus?”

Crowley swallowed her mouthful of cider with somewhat more difficulty than usual. _Well? You already knew this about humans._ Her answer, when she managed it, was truthful: “There has never been a single moment in my life when I have doubted. Not once.”

“Oh,” Salvia said in surprise. “Are _you_ a Christian, then?”

Crowley didn’t laugh, and she didn’t choke, but it was a long moment before she could speak. “No,” she said finally. “I know God is there, but there is nothing in this world that could induce me to worship.”

***

Later, Crowley went outside to discard the water they’d used washing up, and Valeria went with her down the path to show her where the midden was.

“You’re quiet,” Valeria said on the way back up the track.

Crowley _had_ been quiet, but she’d also disguised it expertly, asking about their journey from Tolosa, and encouraging them with interested sounds and appreciative laughter, and Valeria shouldn’t have been able to tell. “It was a long journey,” she said.

“Yes,” Valeria agreed, and how did this young woman—this young, _mortal_ woman, manage to speak with as many layers as Crowley? “Listen. It isn’t so bad.”

“What isn’t?” Crowley kept her voice very even.

Valeria plunged on. “Not...believing. Not having faith in a higher power.” The sound of their footsteps on the path was steady; they walked in step. “Salvia—she doesn’t question it, not for a moment, that there’s a place prepared for her in that...Kingdom. That—that everything she’s suffered will be…” she shrugged. “Not for a moment does she question it.”

Crowley asked, “Do you envy her?” She was meant to be looking out for sins like envy, but in this case she really just wanted to know. “Envy her her certainty?”

Valeria was silent for a moment. “I...hm, _envy_. No, I don’t think so.” They had almost reached the house, and she stopped there, under the stars, while she thought about how to answer. “I am—I am— _afraid_ for her. Afraid and, and.” She blew out a breath. “Angry. Not...not now, but. If it turns out to be false. I’ll be so angry.”

“Angry at whom? The Hibernian saints?”

“No, not...At this God of hers, who, who...it’s hard to explain.” She made a frustrated noise. “Who required her faith. Who... _exacted_ her faith. Salvia is—Salvia is so _good_ , Corvus. Her soul is,” she struggled. “Her soul is _so precious_. She’s offering it to this God and I.” She raised her eyes to the heavens, and then looked back at Crowley. “I just hope this God understands what that’s worth.”

Crowley knew Valeria was not actually burning, but she could almost see her flame. It was like wings. “And if—” How much could she say? “And if this God betrays her?”

“Well.” And here Valeria laughed, and was only a young woman again. “There won’t be much I can do. But I will still put my faith in Salvia, and guard her, and help her as I can, and if there is no God in the end, or if this God is a liar, then...then I’ll prepare her a place with me instead.” She smiled grimly. “And with me, she will never have to doubt.”

“Yours is a mighty love,” Crowley said softly. They stood side by side for a time, looking at the sky in silence. Then Crowley said, “So...you think it’s all right not to worship.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it was a near thing.

“I wouldn’t—I told you. Without her, I am no one.” She smiled then. “I _do_ worship. And I would choose her over any god.”

“Well,” said Crowley, against the solemnity of the moment, “I suppose if you were going to be struck down for blasphemy, it would have happened by now.”

She laughed, as Crowley had intended her to, and they went back into the lamplit cottage, closing the door on the darkness.

***

The rest of the evening passed easily. They had more cider by the fireside, and Crowley told them, at last, some of where she’d been and what she’d seen. She kept the stories light and the details few. She’d been living so closely with the humans in the camp, there were plenty of stories to tell, and what kind of a demon would she be if she couldn’t spin a yarn that only told as much as she wanted it to? She had the young women laughing as the fire died down, and was surprised to find that—in spite of how much she didn’t tell them—speaking of those people and those times to her friends brought her some comfort.

Her hosts prepared a pallet for Crowley, made of woven wool and rabbit skin, and laid it over fresh straw. It was clean and soft, and smelled sweet, and she was more than happy to settle into it for the night.

She lay in the dark and listened as the two young women removed their overclothes and tucked themselves into their own nest, only an arm’s length from where Crowley lay. The fire in the hearth had burned down to a dull red glow that did little to light the little space. Nevertheless, Crowley could see the way Salvia opened her arms for her companion, and how easily Valeria went to her. Could hear her little sigh as she sank down into the warm embrace. Their confidence—their _faith_ in one another was complete. Salvia opened her arms knowing that Valeria would lie in them, and Valeria knew that the open arms were for her, and her alone. The solid surety of it filled the room, and covered over Crowley like an extra blanket.

She slept.

***

They ate dried apples and warm bread for breakfast the next morning, and then Crowley prepared to take her leave.

“Won’t you stay just one more night?” It was Salvia, of course, and she meant it. Crowley was welcome, she knew that. But she wouldn’t stay.

“I am very grateful,” she said. “But I only came to see that you were well.”

Salvia took her at her word, and went to pack a rucksack for her.

Valeria was less gracious about it. “One night? _One night?_ It’s a half-month journey or more from Tolosa. You didn’t come all that way for _one night._ ”

“I did not,” Crowley agreed. “But this was not my final destination.”

“And where is that, if you please?”

“It is...I don’t know. I’ll know when I get there. Does that satisfy you?”

“Not in the slightest.” Valeria scowled. “Corvus, I—” she hesitated. “I have not begun to thank you for—”

“Yes,” Crowley cut in. “And if I leave now, we can keep it that way.”

Just then Salvia emerged from the house, with a little cloth bundle. “Some more apples,” she said, “Some bread. And some cheese. It’s not much, but it will see you to...to the next stop, wherever you are going.”

Crowley took the bundle, and thanked her, and then the time had come to leave. Crowley knew it, and if she stayed any longer it would go worse for her, because of course she had to leave eventually, she had work to do. And anyway, why should she wish her friends to suffer a demon under their roof for any longer than necessary? She looked at them, though, standing close together by the door, and almost wished she could stay after all.

“This is a good life.” She spoke, and she heard how abrupt it sounded. “You have made this haven for each other, and. It’s good.” She frowned down at the little parcel in her hands. “I always thought it better to be alone. As I am.”

Salvia surprised her by giving a gentle laugh. “Alone, Corvus?” she said. “You? But you seek people all the time, you’re not—with the slaves you’ve helped to freedom, and the people you tell stories about. Gallius. You’re not alone.”

“I am in the end,” she said without thinking, then immediately chided herself for being so miserable. _They’re young, and they’re human._ “No, you’re right,” she added hurriedly, waving a hand and nodding. “I only meant...you’re here, you’re together. Safe. It’s good, what you’ve done.” She smiled, looking from one open face to the other. “Seems you’re not the fools I took you for.”

She bowed, then, and made to take her leave, but was stopped by Valeria surging forward to embrace her. Not by halves either; she flung her arms around her neck and held her, tightly, for a long moment. “This is not the only haven,” she said fiercely. “There may be one for you. I hope there is.”

 _Oh._ But this girl had been remarkable from the first time Crowley saw her, outside the market all those years ago. She...well. It was difficult to hide things from her, but Crowley could wish her own loneliness was not quite so visible. She allowed the girl to hold on for another breath, or maybe two, and then she pulled away.

“There was one,” she said. She seemed to have forgotten how to lie. “But it wasn’t...It is closed to me now. There will not be another.”

Something must have shown in her face to forbid even Valeria from contradicting her, or asking questions. She couldn’t stay and face their compassion; this time when she made to step away, they let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOY did I learn a lot about the last days of the Roman Empire in writing this chapter. Even read stuff that wasn't on Wikipedia, can you imagine?? Anyway, I didn't put most of the information in the story, I just needed it to be sure that the story wasn't full of glaring impossibilities. If you find any of those, please let me know.
> 
> That said, there are a few things, particularly later in the chapter, that really just aren't known, or the dates are very uncertain, so in those cases I just chose the possible reality that fit best with what I wanted to do.  
> Notes:  
> Crowley's travels with the Visigoths are loosely based on the campaign of Alaric I, who was king of the Visigoths from 395 AD until his death in 410 AD. He was responsible for the sack of Rome in 410.  
> Foederati: "Barbarian" tribes and nations that were offered most of the privileges of Roman citizenship in exchange for military service in/around the 4th century. Rome did this, most articles say, because the Empire was too vast to defend otherwise.
> 
> Place names:  
> Tolosa: Toulouse, in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France. It was part of the Empire at its widest expanse in Europe, but it was ethnically Germanic or Celtic (I think), and when the Visigoths took over it was more like Romans leaving rather than anyone invading.  
> Illyria: Region at the west side of the Balkan peninsula, on the Adriatic.  
> Ticinum: Modern-day Pavia, in Lombardy, Italy. There was indeed a massacre there, by the Roman locals against the families of the _foederati_. Even though the _foederati_ (at that precise moment) were fighting on the side of Rome, there was a lot of mistrust directed towards them. Honorius, the emperor at the time, encouraged the suspicion and violence, in order to ensure the continued loyalty of his very anti-barbarian base of support. Luckily, there are absolutely zero modern-day parallels to this kind of bigotry and savagery. 21st Century FTW, amirite?  
> Burdigala: Latin name for Bordeaux, in the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast of France.  
> Mare nostrum: Literally "Our sea" - a Roman name for the Mediterranean.  
> Cornovii: One of the Celtic tribes of Britain, who lived (roughly and partly) on the Cornish peninsula to the south-west.  
> Durnovaria: Today, Dorcester. A town on the south coast of Britain  
> Dumnonia: Today, Devon, in the UK. The Dumnonii were the dominant tribe of what is today Devon and Cornwall.  
> Isca: Today, Exeter. Also called Isca Dumnoniorum or Caer Uisc.  
> Kerniw: One of many possible spellings for the place known today as Cornwall  
> Gwent and Dyfed: Regions in southern Wales  
> Hibernia: Latin word for Ireland
> 
> So basically, Crowley travelled through Croatia or Slovenia and into northern Italy before heading back to Tolosa. Salvia and Valeria -and later Crowley - went down from the mountains around Tolosa to Bordeaux, sailed to the south coast of Great Britain, and headed west and north from Exeter into Devon. 
> 
> There is evidence that the female saints referenced by Salvia actually existed, but no one is sure exactly where, and exactly when, and whether they knew each other, or were even alive at the same time. Like many Christian influences in Cornwall, they are thought to have come from Ireland or Wales, rather than from the Romans, since the Romans didn't get as much of a foothold in that part of Britain.  
> There is a connection to sacred wells in some of the lore surrounding these saints. Some names to look for are Breaga, Endelienda, and Morwenna. [The Female Saints of Cornwall by Sarah Fish](https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/429/1/SARAH%20FISH.pdf) and [Women Saints of Cornwall by Dmitry Lapa](http://orthochristian.com/114524.html)
> 
> One more cool thing I want to tell you about is [ORBIS - The Stanford Geospatial Netword Model of the Roman World](http://orbis.stanford.edu/), which lets to input start and end points of a journey, along with several other variables such as time of year and how quickly or cheaply you want to travel, and will tell you how long such a trip would reasonably have taken in Ancient Rome. The sheer depth and breadth of nerdery required to make such a tool thrills me to my bones. It was also very useful!!
> 
> This is by far the longest end note I have ever had to include in a fic. Thank you, as always, for reading. You may have noticed that the chapter count has become a question mark again. It's not my fault; more stuff keeps happening, and I have to write it down. I make no commitments whatsoever about posting times, particularly not if every darn chapter is going to be 6 or 7 K words. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I will keep writing this.  
> <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley finds the silence she longs for in the wilds of Britain, and lets the time pass there. Not thousands of years; there are not very many thousands of years left. Still, a while. And she does what she can to keep inquisitive humans out of her path. To avoid getting drawn in, again, to their affairs.  
> She doesn't quite succeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know that [Silvergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl) is a gift and a blessing to every fandom she touches. She is also a generous and deeply insightful beta and gave me all the encouragement. She is every bit as lovely and profoundly intelligent as she seems.  
> Thanks also to [antheiasilva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheiasilva/pseuds/antheiasilva) for his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure medieval...everything, and for making sure I spelled the Welsh words correctly, and didn't inadvertently use an Old English word when, GASP, the Angles and Saxons haven't even gotten there yet.  
> It's such a gift, having brilliant friends.

_If there is no God in the end, or if this God is a liar, then I’ll prepare her a place with me instead. And with me, she will never have to doubt._

Crowley walked away from the little cottage in the clearing where, against odds and all logic, two puny humans lived and loved each other and were free. Valeria’s words came back to her often, as she made her way through the wilderness. _I believe in Salvia._

Human faith, it seemed, was as complex and faceted as human-anything-else. Who had more faith? Salvia, putting her trust in one unfortunate carpenter five centuries dead? Or Valeria, standing just behind Salvia’s shoulder, arms crossed, feet planted, glaring _daggers_ at this God, daring Her to be false, _waiting_ for one misstep, because no one could be allowed to betray Salvia’s faith, not even God Herself. Was that faith?

Was that _love_? When Valeria knew what a risk Salvia was taking, what a terrible risk, when she placed her faith in something so unknowable? To stand by, merely guarding, merely ready if the worst should happen? Was it?

Crowley did not love; she was a demon. But if she did, she would never stand by and allow her beloved to risk their very soul. 

No, not risk; _sacrifice._ Faith in _this_ God, in _this_ Heaven, could never result in anything but ruin. Crowley did not have the luxury of doubt.

 _I know you’re there,_ she thought, Heavenward, as she picked her way through the wilderness. She couldn’t say it aloud, but the words were there in her head. _I know you see me, and see them, and see all of this. I know you see what Heaven has wrought in your name. You haven’t said a word. You haven’t raised a hand to stop it. You’re completely silent but I know you’re there. I cannot doubt it; I wish I could._

 _I know,_ Crowley thought, louder now. _I cannot face you fiercely like she can because I already know how powerless I am. I’ve already seen your betrayals, over and over, so many, too many to count._

_I can have faith that you’re there, but that’s all. No faith can be true if it expects any help or compassion from you. Or justice…_

“Justice?” It was such an alien concept—or ought to be, for a demon—that she surprised herself into speaking aloud. A moment later she was embarrassed, for all that only a small marten was there to hear her. It paused in its snuffling through the underbrush and looked at her contemptuously.

“Well, exactly,” she told it, with a well-crafted, irreproachable sneer. “Doesn’t exist, does it? And if it did, it certainly wouldn’t be _Heaven_ doling it out.”

At which point she shook herself, and thought no more about faith, or love, or justice. She glowered at the little animal on her way past. She yearned, a little, for the desert from before the Flood. She’d lived there for centuries, and never wondered about all these human follies. It was time for her to lose herself again.

***

She wandered. What was a hundred years, or a hundred and twenty, while she rested? There was still solitude to be found in the wilds of Britannia. There were forests that the axes of the Romans had never found, and rolling wolds and downlands where no human strayed. The quiet seeped into her, and only then did she realize how loud the world had become.

When the world had been newer, she could let centuries pass, millennia even, and then return to where the humans were living, to find that little had changed. But the world would be five thousand years old in a few brief centuries, and the humans, far from being a few scattered tribes fanning out from a decrepit and abandoned garden, numbered in the millions now. 

Millions, and no more predictable than they had ever been. Of course, the descent into hubris and debauchery and violence and grasping ambition was practically assured, as it ever was. But so too was the climb out of wretchedness, the vision, the always-unforeseen blossoming of goodness and mercy where no one could possibly expect it. They had knowledge of good and evil, these apes, and practiced both so erratically, and yet so assiduously, that it was impossible to guess where the next heights or depths would manifest. Individually, they were an unending mystery.

They sorted themselves into Heaven and Hell with unflagging efficiency, too, with or without Crowley’s interference. It was restful to leave them to it for a while, after all the time spent in the crowded, gilded rot of Roman civilization. The wilderness was just what she needed. It was enough unlike a city, yes, but also enough unlike a cheerful hearth in the company of friends. She needed to forget for a while. She needed to be gone.

She kept count of the years, a little more than before. She watched them go by out of the corner of her eye. It wouldn’t do to lose track, now.

One day, while she was climbing a ridge above a wide plain, it occurred to Crowley that she'd been in the wilds longer than any human lifetime. The Legions had been gone for over a hundred years. Rome, which had (like the Hyksos, like the Zhou) seemed so enduring, had been reduced to utter irrelevancy in a matter of a hundred or so years. Any who might remember Rome and its Empire—and its bondage—had grown old and passed away, and their children, and their children. She didn't know any of the humans alive in the world.

_Well?_ she asked herself, cresting the ridge and looking out at the country spread out below her, _They always die. Almost all the humans that have ever existed are dead._

It took her with a strange kind of loneliness, though, for all the practice she had at keeping it at bay. There had been those who had thought of her kindly, and they were gone. There had been some who’d even known what she was, but these were long since turned to dust. 

Not that her strangeness was a secret. What did they think? She with her dark glasses and her face unchanged after decades? It wasn’t as though she had _hidden_ it. It was just that she had...well, not forgotten, exactly. She was the Serpent of Eden; it wasn’t the sort of thing you could forget. But Gallius, Salvia, Valeria...she hadn’t told them.

Now there was no one alive who knew her for what she was. 

And then a voice in her head, unbidden, said _, No one except the angel._

Oh, yes, the angel. She tried to tell herself she hadn’t thought of him in centuries. She was a demon, though; she knew how to spot a lie. In fact, the angel came into her mind with depressing regularity, it was just that she worked very hard not to let him stay there. 

_Does it help?_ He’d seen her loneliness, and pitied her. _What about after? After they’re gone?_ And of course, they were gone. They were gone almost as soon as they came. _I’m so sorry, my dear._

She shook herself. It didn’t matter that the angel was the only being on earth who knew her for what she was. He could be anywhere in the wide, wide world. She had made friends among the humans before. Perhaps one day she would again, and then she would be sure to tell them what she was. She’d tell them all, why not? The angel was nothing to her, could give her nothing she couldn’t get just as well from fleeting, transitory humans. They at least might forgive her for being what she was. The angel never would.

She climbed down from the ridge and onto the rolling plain, thinking only _north_ and _west_ and requiring no clearer destination. She was in no hurry; there was always time.

***

While she kept to the woods, it suited Crowley to have them to herself. Humans kept away from the woods, as a rule. They were afraid of the dark. Still, it would be wise not to take anything for granted. As she passed near human settlements, all along her path through the lands in the west of Britannia, she planted thoughts of monsters and horrors and strange, uncanny happenings. They told these stories already: demonic hounds and wild hunts and hidden knots of adders. Every patch of wood harboured its own monster, its own horror. The stories required very little help from her. Still, she was diligent. Any woods she chose to stop in, even if only for a short time, soon sprouted tales of a foul serpent. This ensured she was left undisturbed.

Until, of course, some humans came along, and surprised her, as they always did.

***

She hadn’t known anyone was near, that day in early summer. She had been in the woods for long enough—perhaps a hundred and fifty years—that she ought to have known better. But there was a nest of crows, in the crook of an old tree at the top of a high, steep bank, and she’d been chatting with them, and they’d been mocking her, and she must have been more absorbed than she thought. 

It was shocking, really, for her not to hear and for the crows not to tell her, the bastards. She didn’t notice the four men until they had her surrounded. A sharp drop on one side, and four men on the other. 

She took a quick account of herself. There shouldn’t have been anything odd about her. She was dressed as any hunter or wanderer might dress. It was the custom of local men to wear their hair as long and wild as the fancy took them, so they ought not have immediately taken her for a woman, let alone a demon. She was in shadow, and they couldn’t have seen her eyes from behind.

The first surprise, when she turned to face them, was their composure. There was no menace in their stance, and no fear. They did not have weapons drawn. 

“Ah,” the smallest one said with a nod, looking her up and down exactly once. “You’ll be the neidr.” His eyes were dark and his gaze direct; he showed no evidence of surprise.

 _Neidr_ , he’d said. Snake. Well, fair enough. That was the tale she sowed most often, that of a snake or serpent or dragon. Also, she rarely bothered to cover her eyes here in the wilderness, so it would be clear enough that she was _something_ , now that they could see her face.

No sense giving everything away too quickly, though. “Do I look like a snake to you?”

“There have been tales,” a second man with a wild dark beard told her, without answering her question. “Tales of a monster, a fearful serpent, lurking in the darkest part of the woods.”

“There are always tales,” Crowley pointed out. “There are always monsters.”

“This one is different,” the small one said, a smile lurking on his beardless face.

“Oh?” she said. “And how do you know that?”

A third man, the only one with golden hair, grinned at her. “Well, for a start,” he said, “it wasn’t us who made it up!”

The others laughed at that, and Crowley wondered at them, faced with someone they believed (correctly) to be a monstrous serpent, laughing together. She wanted to know more about them. ( _You always get fond of them,_ Gallius had told her, years and years ago. _I just met them,_ she argued to him in her head. _I’m not fond,_ _I’m curious. Not the same thing.)_

A brief discussion, and they agreed that she might walk with them a ways, since they were going in the same direction. By the time the five of them made camp that first night, Crowley was mostly certain they’d figured out that she was a woman (after a fashion) under her woodsman’s clothes, but they made no comment, and treated her with the same rough courtesy any stranger might expect.

Four brothers, they were, rough and ragged, who roamed the woods almost as freely as Crowley herself. The oldest, tall and broad, with the dark beard, was Gareith. Next came Huw, bigger even than Gareith, with a silent grey dog at his heel. The laughing fair haired one was Gwilym, and the small one with the smooth face was Emrys. She would have known them for brothers even without her demon’s senses, and even if they hadn’t told her, from the shape of their faces and the boldness of their expressions. They were sons of a woman named Branwen, they told her, but then would say nothing more about her. 

That first night, Crowley built the fire for them, and lit it with miraculous ease. They were all glad of the blaze, and no one commented on her skill. 

They sat by the fire waiting for the meat to roast, the four brothers and Crowley. It was best to have a fire, they said. There were wolves in these woods, they told her (which she knew), and lynx, and the odd bear—although these last were very rare—so the dangers were real, even without the humans who could also be found here.

“Give me a bear or a wolf any day,” Gwilym said, with a twisting smile. He was working a tendon bowstring in his fingers with a bone tool while the meat sizzled on the fire. “The men who roam these woods are much more dangerous.” 

There was a stiffness in the air around the fire, at that, and a moment where he could have explained, told her more. Crowley watched him bite it back. She wondered, but gave no sign that she’d noticed.

“And of course,” she said instead, “there are the snakes and wyverns to contend with. I understand there’s a direful serpent in these woods, and many other fearsome beasts besides. Are you not frightened?”

This drew a small laugh around the fire, and silent Huw caught her eye and grinned.

“Aye,” Gwilym said, letting the tension fade, “the tales are terrible indeed. But we have not seen any such beasts in all the time we’ve been here.” He gave a twist to the cord in his hands. “Perhaps they’re frightened of us.”

“That must be it,” Crowley agreed, and the moment passed.

Gareith, feet bare while his stockings aired, knelt up by the fire and lifted one of the spits off its support to test the meat. “It was Emrys’ idea, the stories were,” he said. “It takes very little to get a tale started. Sometimes they get to the next village before we do!” The brothers laughed again, and he added, “We change some of the details sometimes, so it sounds like a different tale, or a different beast.” He took his hunting knife and cut a slice into the thigh of the roasting rabbit, checking for doneness. 

“Is it enough?” Crowley wondered. “Does it keep the forest free of trouble?”

There was another rustle of something around the fire, and Crowley thought all she’d get was another silence. But then Gareith spoke up again.

“It keeps the forest free of nosy villagers, and their traps, and their dogs,” he said. “Which is good for old Kee, who dislikes unmannerly intruders.” He tossed a bit of meat to Huw’s shaggy grey hound, who caught it tidily. Crowley had never seen such a polite dog. 

“And it gives us a laugh,” added Gwilym, winding his finished bowstring into a ball around his fingers.

“We live well enough,” Gareith finished. He said nothing more, but set to dividing the meat up into five portions.

Crowley left it at that. Her question— _does it keep the forest free of trouble?_ —went unanswered, which was answer enough.

Yes, she could spare some days or weeks with these new companions. _Curious,_ she told Gallius’ raised eyebrow in her mind. _Nothing more._

The next day, as they broke camp, Gwilym asked her, offhand, whether she was heading north, and she shrugged, every bit as casual, and said she had no particular plans, and might come along with them instead, for a time, if they wouldn’t mind an extra companion. Gareith looked over at that, and nodded peaceably, and no more was said about it. 

***

Over the days that followed, she came to know more about them.

Gareith was the oldest, and the leader, after a fashion. He wore his hair wild, only sometimes deigning to spend any time unravelling his hair and freeing the twigs and sprigs of greenery that had got caught in it. It gave him a lawless look, but his eyes were steady and his judgement, Crowley learned, was sound. He was not, though, what anyone would call _tame_. None of them were.

Huw was the largest of them all, hulking and powerful, with the same black hair as his oldest brother and dark eyes that took in everything. He seldom spoke. “He’s not simple,” Gareith told Crowley, early on. His voice was a little defensive, but Crowley could see for herself that Huw was entirely present. He murmured, sometimes, to the skinny wolfhound who ranged by his side (who was called Kee), but otherwise said little. He knew where to find all sorts of leaves and roots and other edible plants, and gathered them as they walked.

Gwilym had a bony, craggy build very different from his older brother’s brawn, and fair colouring besides. He sneered and chided and laughed and mocked, and made the others smile, and was the best archer of the four. He liked to sing and whistle, and every so often had a tale to tell by the fire at night.

The smallest one was Emrys. Small and steady, with boots that struck the earth with purpose, and that solid look across his chest that hinted at more strength than might be presumed by his narrow shoulders. Emrys, when he spoke, spoke sense. He deferred to his older brothers in most of their daily activities, but when Emrys saw fit to speak up or disagree, even Gareith listened. 

She found herself disconcertingly grateful for their welcome, and was careful not to abuse their generosity. Although she herself did not need to eat, except for the look of the thing, she made sure that their food packs were always comfortably full. No real miracles were required for this; by now she knew the forest well, and could easily gather those plants she knew to be edible as they moved along their way, as Huw did. As for meat, well, Crowley did not hunt, herself, but she watched Huw set his snares and knew where the traps were. All that remained was to lure the small prey animals towards them. She knew her business well; their little camp was always well fed.

She watched them, these brothers. They rarely kept one camp for more than a night, and they did not seem to have any particular destination, beyond keeping to the woods and away from villages and settlements. They walked openly, in the daylight, but Huw walked in the rear and covered traces of their passing, and sometimes Gareith veered off to the left or right, crushing leaves and breaking branches with deliberate clumsiness, creating a false trail that would be easy to follow, for any tracker that might be in the woods. No one spoke of it, or said who might be tracking them. 

She didn’t ask. She was as curious and full of questions as ever, but she knew how to wait.

***

The first time they came to a village, she thought she might get some answers at last.

The brothers were buoyant all that morning, breakfasting and washing and packing up their camp. Gareith even tidied his hair. 

There had been signs, in the last days. More traps laid, and food carefully packed and preserved instead of eaten right away. Plants and berries gathered, and nuts, and all kinds of bounty, far beyond the needs of their little camp. At one point Huw came back to camp with a sack full to bursting with early walnuts. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. There was a glint in his eye, though; he knew she was wondering. He wasn’t going to tell her, and she wasn’t going to ask. She waited.

Her patience was rewarded when they forded a small stream and clambered around a rocky bluff where the trees thinned out, to find themselves at the edge of the forest. There, a small hamlet—barely a dozen dwellings—lay nestled in the shelter of the hillside. 

It was not a prospering settlement. Though it was summer, there were gaunt faces everywhere she looked, and even the children seemed listless. As they approached, Crowley faded into the background. No one would pay her any notice if she did not wish them to, and this was the best way to see what there was to see. 

As she watched, a tall, grey-haired woman came out of one of the dwellings, pushing aside the woven curtain across the door. When she caught sight of Gareith and the others, she smiled—a tired smile, but real.

“O glorious day, for the sons of Branwen have returned,” she said, and there was teasing in her speech, but gladness as well, and she reached out to each of the brothers in turn and embraced them. “It is good to see your faces.”

The food the brothers had brought was gratefully received, and soon there was stew bubbling and fires roasting. The village children drew near as they worked, and Huw, still silent, smiled at them. He brought out his pouch full of fruit and nuts and offered it around, and eyes began to brighten a little, and tongues to loosen. 

But Crowley, watching from afar, did not miss the way everyone’s eyes lingered on the roasting meat or the steaming cauldron, and she wondered—these people lived in the shelter of a forest that was filled to bursting with food, and the low lands around the stream were planted and fertile, and there were fish. Each house seemed to have a garden. Why were they so hungry?

And why, when everyone was clearly so pleased to see the sons of Branwen, did no one entreat them to stay? They were there long enough to get the food cooking, and for the grey-haired woman—Siân—to stand aside with Emrys for a time, talking low, but no more. Before the meal even began, Gareith gave a sign, and the four men were off and away.

She rejoined them as they left the village, silently making herself one of their number again so that, just as they did not see the moment she had withdrawn, they did not mark when she reappeared. They were more than two miles’ tramp along the river’s edge from the village before Emrys looked up and saw her.

“I did not even think to wonder where you’d gone,” he said. “You’re a sly neidr, no doubt.”

“Wily,” Crowley agreed. She offered no explanation, and she knew by now that Emrys wouldn’t ask for one. There were still no answers to her own questions.

***

The following morning, Crowley finally learned where the danger lay.

They’d made a very small, simple camp, adequate to eat an uncooked meal and sleep during the hours of darkness, and no more. “Too close to the village,” Gareith had said, and the others seemed to agree, for whatever that meant. They were careful breaking camp—as they always were, and Crowley still did not know why—to cover the signs of their having been there, and to create several false trails away from where they’d slept, before setting out again. Perhaps their stealth was even more painstaking than usual, but there was nothing else to signal anything amiss.

They had just climbed a bluff above a small streambed and topped the ridge, where a little trail—not quite a road—ran along the more open ground. Suddenly Huw, walking in front, stopped short and put out his arm to halt the others as well. Following his eyes, Crowley saw that Kee, his grey dog, was standing frozen, eyes fixed on the trail ahead, where it curved behind a copse of trees.

Crowley closed her eyes to look around the bend, and saw them. There was a band of men, armed and mounted, perhaps a dozen of them, riding up the road, led by a brutish-looking man with a chestnut beard. The others were a little afraid of him. She looked at him more closely and understood why.

Before she could turn to warn the others, she felt a touch on her shoulder. It was Emrys, beckoning her to come back down off the trail and back into the cover offered by the bluff. Gareith and Gwilym were already ahead of them, and she had barely heard them move. Huw and the hound followed them down.

They crouched in the underbrush, among some moss-covered boulders, silent. Their hoods were drawn up to cover their pale faces, and they hardly seemed to breathe.

It was the first time Crowley had seen fear in them.

The riders came into view less than a minute later, in little clusters of two or three. They rode openly, making no attempt at stealth, and their pack animals were laden with goods. The weapons they had were sheathed and hanging from their horses’ harness. They were not expecting to fight.

The sons of Branwen, in contrast, lay tensely on the ground, clinging to what cover they could find. They kept their eyes on the mounted men as they passed, their faces grim. Crowley, without needing to know why, put a mask over their presence so that they would not be discovered.

Still, they stayed hidden and silent a long time after the little band had passed by.

“He’s getting more and more brazen,” Gwilym said at last, sitting up with a stretch of his neck.

“He has every reason to be.” Gareith’s voice was bitter. “There are none left from here to the Hafren who can still oppose him.”

“Eighteen now,” said Emrys.

“Yes, he’ll have an army soon.” Gareith stood, then, and brushed the dirt off his clothes. “They won’t make Siân’s village until tomorrow at the earliest, if that’s where they’re headed. They’ll have everything hidden by then.”

“They’ve nothing left to take, anyway, not until the harvest.”

“You wouldn’t think so.” Gwilym’s mocking had no humour to it. 

Their mood remained bleak as they emerged from the trees again and set off down the trail in the direction the other men had come from. This was not the time to question them, not while they were still shedding little tendrils of fear. Crowley could put certain pieces together, though. She would ask them about it later.

In the end, she didn’t need to. Some miles later, as they came off the road again and descended a bank into a river valley, Emrys fell into step beside Crowley. “His name is Meuric,” he offered. “The leader of that band.”

“The brute with the beard,” she said.

“Aye. He calls himself a lord, or even a king, and seeks to live without working to keep himself. Comes with his men and his weapons, and demands a tithe.”

“A tax, he calls it,” Gareith put in. It seemed they were more ready to talk than Crowley had thought. “On whatever the villages grow for themselves, and on whatever game may come from in the forest. He says the food is payment for the lord’s protection.”

“Protection against what?” Crowley wondered, stepping carefully across a rocky stretch of riverbank down to where the water was shallow and they could cross it.

Gwilym laughed bitterly, stones clattering beneath his feet as he picked his way across the ford behind her. “Against his own brigands, of course.” 

The picture became much, much clearer. “They’re the reason those villagers were so hungry,” she realized. “And why you did not stay to share their food, since there was so little of it.”

“Aye,” Emrys agreed, stepping out of the river and clambering up the bank to where the footing was easier. He reached the top and stood upright, brushing the dirt from his hands. “They eat well, these men, on what they exact in payment from the people, while the people starve.”

“Some must resist,” Crowley said, perplexed.

“Some have.” Gareith accepted Emrys’ hand up to join him at the top of the bank. “They are all either dead or exiled.”

 _Exile._ Suddenly Crowley saw it. “ _You_ resisted.” She stopped walking abruptly and stood in the water, letting it flow over her feet. “The four of you.” She looked around at the four men, and saw it so clearly. “You resisted, and caused trouble, and now you’re…”

“As you see us,” Gwilym agreed. “Hiding like rabbits in the woods.” He set off towards the hills, and the others followed.

 _Such sorrow._ Crowley had no wish to prod their wounds. She asked instead about this Meuric, and whether the brothers might find more freedom somewhere else, somewhere not within the reach or grasp of this ambitious lord. 

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?” Gareith said, walking at her side. “The world is changing, Crowley. When the Romans were cast out, so the old men tell us, there was room, at last, to breathe, and we could call the land our own again. But the forests are no longer free. Every land now has its own king, and everyone who lives there is his subject, even if they have never seen him.”

“And it’s getting worse,” Emrys spoke up unexpectedly, turning to speak over his shoulder. “If the rumours are to be believed. Siân believes them.” They all looked at him. He said, “There’s a new king in the south who is forging alliances, making peace between the warring lords.”

“Is that bad?” Crowley wondered.

“Peace will only come when they’ve divided up all the land, and every king knows which bit is his,” Emrys told him. “And once their lordship is assured, they will go on taxing the people for what they grow—since the land, they say, belongs to them.”

“It is already difficult, to live freely off the land, and owe fealty to no one,” Gareith said slowly. “It would be impossible if the lords were united under one kingdom. There would be no free places left. Everyone who wasn’t a king would be a slave.”

He lapsed into gloomy silence then. There was no more to be said.

They walked several more miles before they came to a place where they could camp. They needed to be well away from the village—any village—before they could stop, or else any traces they left might bring retribution. Crowley understood now the precautions the brothers took in the forest, not to stay in one place for too long, and to cover their traces as they went. Crowley had wondered before who might wish to track four brothers living quietly in the forest. Now she knew.

***

They’d finally left behind the wide valley with the snaking river and had spent the day climbing up towards the wolds whose tops they could see against the sky in the distance as they approached. The land was open here, broad and grassy and rolling, but the gullies around stream systems were thick with trees. They’d found a good camp site in a sheltered place where two brooks met in a small copse of trees to set their camp. They could stay there for a few nights, Gareith had decided.

That afternoon, Crowley found herself alone in the camp but for Emrys, while the others had taken themselves off on various errands; firewood and food were always needed, and sometimes solitude was as well, with how closely these brothers lived together. She and Emrys stayed behind and set to their own tasks. 

Emrys kept peering at her as they worked. Clearly the time had come for questions.

“Ask, then,” she said gruffly, without looking up from her pile of wilted nettles.

He blinked, but then said, “Are you actually a snake?”

She was taken aback at his directness. _Well, you wanted to be seen,_ she reminded herself, and willed away the impulse to deflect and hide. 

“No,” she said plainly. “I can appear as a snake, or as a human, but I am neither. I am a demon.”

Emrys didn’t falter, but worked a moment at his mending, considering. Then he said, “You are very unlike the stories I’ve heard about demons.”

She kept her eyes on the green stems she was stripping for the soup. “Stories are often misleading.”

“Well, but you’ve been travelling with us for many days, and have not harmed us. The traps are more full than ever.” He gestured at her. “You’re making nettle soup.” He smiled. “Are these signs of your demonic nature?”

 _Stupid humans._ “You are too easily lulled,” she said, looking up at him at last. “I am the Serpent of Eden.”

Now he did falter a little, to her secret satisfaction, and looked at her sharply. “I’ve heard those stories,” he said. “There are priests, Christians. They always have stories. I remember that one.”

“I am, in fact, quite dangerous,” she told him. “Does this alter my welcome here?”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Crowley, you start fires with your fingers and have _yellow viper eyes_. We never thought you were _human._ ” He huffed a breath. “It’s not that I think you couldn’t harm us. I just think you _won’t._ ”

Crowley had nothing to say to that. He was right, of course he was. 

He went on: “But stories, as you say, are misleading.” He cut through a bit of leather lacing with his knife. “What was it really like, there in the garden?”

Crowley blinked, and remembered to breathe only a little late. _Tell me of Eden,_ _he says._

“If what I’ve asked is painful, friend,” Emrys said softly, “we do not have to speak of it.”

“No,” she said. _Friend, he calls me still._ “No, I’ll tell you. It’s just that no one’s ever asked before.”

He nodded, then, and began to feed the lace through the small holes he’d punched around the tear in his bag. He listened as he worked.

“The garden was beautiful,” she said, for it had been. “It had everything they could want. The plants, the rivers, the animals, everything was there to serve them. There was no danger, no strife. No fear. Everything they could want. There was only one thing they could not do.”

“Two things,” he amended. She looked at him. He said, “They couldn’t eat the fruit, and they couldn’t leave the garden.”

 _What?_ “Why should they wish to leave?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps they wouldn’t wish to. But the choice was not offered. I would want the choice.”

She stared at him. “She’s God,” Crowley said. “She does as she sees fit.”

Another shrug as he worked. “She’s not _my_ god. I think she was wrong.”

“It’s not wrong,” Crowley said. And then, bitterly, “It’s _ineffable._ ”

They both worked in silence for a beat or two, Emrys giving her the peace she needed to form her words.

“I tempted them,” she told him. “The woman. I told her she wouldn’t die, but instead have knowledge.” Knowledge of good and evil, she explained. Knowledge that some things were good, and some evil, there beyond the garden wall. _Knowledge._ When the woman heard that, Crowley went on, she wanted it, and claimed it, and gave it to the man also. Crowley kept her voice very level when she told of God’s discovery, and of what came after.

She said nothing aboutone anxious, kindhearted, infuriating angel, or about the sick, burning sensation in her chest when she learned how the humans were to be punished. Nothing about how she’d asked herself, later, whether she’d still have tempted the woman, if she’d known what their fate would be. How she was never sure of the answer. If even her ignorance was part of God’s plan. _Ineffable_. The word tasted of bile and ashes.

Emrys listened to everything she said without interrupting. When she was finished, he was quiet for a long while. “The holy man told it differently,” he said at last. “Made it sound more like a sin and less like a, a choice. Eating the fruit.”

“A _choice?_ ” Crowley couldn’t help a hiss on the word. “I _tempted_ her.”

“A choice, yes.” It was Gareith, back with an armful of firewood, speaking from behind her. She hadn’t even known he was there. He said, “That’s what it’s called when you decide whether the gain is worth the risk. You didn’t force her. Did she ever tell you she regretted it?”

“I—what?” She turned to look at him. “No, I never spoke to her again. She went off into the desert.”

“Well. She ate the fruit. She made a choice.” Gareith shrugged, dumping his load on the ground. 

“The _right_ choice.” It was Emrys, and when she looked at him, his expression was unexpectedly fierce. “Safety comes at a high price, sometimes.” His mouth closed in a grim line. “It is neither the only aim, nor the best. I am glad she ate the fruit. We’re better off. We are, Crowley. Better with knowledge and choices than safety and...and walls.”

Crowley stared at him. _You do not know what Falling feels like,_ she thought. And there was no way she could tell him. “If you are going to persist in being blind to my evil nature,” she said, “I shall at least remember not to tempt you with safety.”

“Indeed no,” Emrys laughed. _Laughed._ “You’d have to do better than that.” His smile faded, and he added softly, “...and so would I, if you were to do me the honour of testing me as you tested her.”

 _Honour?_ “She _failed_ the test!” said Crowley, exasperated.

He looked at her for a moment, holding her eye, a strange smile hovering at the edges of his mouth. “Failed?” he said. “Did she?” 

***

Gareith was quiet that evening as the sun went down. Crowley noticed his silence even among the bustle of activity that came when Gwilym returned with the carcass of a small roe deer. There was work, then, cutting and skinning and cleaning. (They could not eat all the meat of even a small deer in one night, but they could set strips of it to dry, and they could lay aside those other parts of the animal that they might use for tools or bowstrings, or hand over at the next village for others to use.) They were tired by the time the evening’s meal was sizzling over the fire.

They’d eaten well, and a skin of ale was making its way around the fire for the fourth or fifth time. They were warm and well-fed and comfortable. 

The question, when it came, was a question she might have expected from Emrys, but it was Gareith who asked it. 

“Who else have you tempted?” He asked it idly, but it made Crowley suspicious.

“Many, many people. It has been thousands of years.” How much honesty did she really want to give them?

He looked at her then. “Why have you not tested us?” 

Crowley blinked, then dragged her gaze away from the fire. “What?”

He said, “You’ve been with us for weeks, Serpent of Eden. Has there been a test, and we just didn’t notice?”

 _What?_ “I...no?” 

“Why?”

Crowley looked around the fire, searching their faces for some sign of the horror that such a request ought to inspire. Instead, to a man, they were merely curious. Expectant, even.

She tried to understand. “I have camped with you. Shared a fire and food with you. You’ve been kind—yes, Gwilym, you _have_ , even you. You’re not the bastard you think you are.” How could she make them understand? “You have shown me the people you care for. You have _trusted_ me. Why should I wish to harm you? Why should you ask me to?”

“He’s not asking you to harm us,” Emrys said, impatient. “You tested the woman and she—”

“She failed! She was cast out of paradise! Because of her—”

“She did _not_ fail. You tested her, and out of it she gained knowledge and freedom from the walls and rules that bound her.” Gareith’s eyes gleamed fiercely. He took a breath, and said, “These are not my gods, Crowley. I wouldn’t believe in this garden at all except you tell me you were there. But if it was real, it sounds more like a prison than a paradise. I hate walls. I hope I would have chosen as she did.”

 _What if you did the bad thing and I did the good thing?_ Crowley did not know what to think.

“She did not know what was beyond her walls, and she chose it anyway,” Gareith said. “I want the same chance you gave her.”

Emrys looked at Crowley’s stricken expression, and put a hand on his brother’s arm, stilling him. “It’s all right, Crowley,” he said. “You’ve been a friend to us. We will not ask it if it worries you so deeply. But come now, tell us. Surely the Serpent of Eden has thought before now, idly, about how she might tempt the sons of Branwen?”

Well. Of course she had. She who knew how to lure even the little trembling creatures towards the snares that lay in the underbrush, of course she knew how she would tempt these men. “Yes,” she admitted. “But—” 

“Well, tell us, then.” Gwilym had been quiet up to now. “You don’t have to tempt us. Just tell us what you’d do.”

She looked around the fire at four eager faces—yes, even Huw’s eyes were canted towards her. He was as curious as the others. She sighed. 

“Oh, fine. I am a mere immortal demon, and cannot stand against your determined stupidity. But for pity’s sake remember what I am _._ ” 

“We’ll try to resist your wiles,” Gwilym said drily. 

_Fools._ But she was in it now. She took a breath, and began.

“For you, I would play upon your noblest instincts. Your wish to see the people safe, and fed, and justly dealt with. I would speak of how the four of you are strong. How you are fighters. And how you command loyalty as well, so that there are many men in the villages who would follow you, and fight with you, and not be afraid, if you were leading.”

“Aye, that’s true, and a fair number of women, too,” Gwilym agreed. “People are fierce, hereabouts.”

“So I see. So I would ask you to tell me, truly: What do these kings have that you don’t have?” She looked around, to be sure they were listening. “Why could you not choose your own stretch of land, and claim it, and defend it, as well as they can? You could, you know you could. You do not have to live as fugitives,” she insisted. “You, too, could be kings.” 

They knew, they _knew_ what she was doing. They had _asked_ her to. That must make them immune, surely? Should protect them? _And whose fault would it be if it didn’t?_

She was annoyed with them, she realised suddenly, for asking this of her. As if she’d be so easy to resist, as if there could be no danger to them from...from _putting her through her paces._

She thought she might just test them, truly, only a little. _Let us see what you are made of, then, you wild and hearty Britons._

“Kings,” she said again, imbuing the word with glamour. And then she held out the real prize: “And the people on _your_ lands would never starve.” 

There was a feeling in the air around them, showing her where their walls were weakest. _Ah, so you can be tempted._ If she wanted, she could have them. She didn’t, of course, but... _just a little further. Just to see._

“If you want to protect these people,” she went on, “Then claim your own lordship, and see to it that justice prevails for all within your borders.” _Justice_. It was more of a lure to these men than power, that was certain. “Let your children be rulers instead of subjects or serfs. Or slaves.”

 _This isn’t real._ Still, she laid out one last twist of her snare: “You have earned it, if anyone has. More than this Meuric. You, who have already sacrificed so much. Who have already lost so much, you _sons of Branwen_.” Bringing their mother into it was dirty, she knew. Dirty and effective, bait for the trap. All that was left was to tie it off neatly, and let it do its work. “Power is dangerous in the wrong hands _,_ ” she said. “But _you_ would not misuse it.”

 _There._ That was what a mortal got for trying to tempt the Serpent of Eden.

As the silence stretched on, her affronted anger faded and she began to worry that she had wrought too well. There was just a little bit of _give_ to the air. They seemed to have forgotten all about their little dare, their little _tell us what you’d say, go on, if you were tempting us in earnest._ They were considering it. _No._

Of course she’d be able to talk them out of it; of course she would. Tell them all the reasons why it was actually a terrible idea, what it would do to them to believe they could seize power and expect to remain uncorrupted. Why power was just another prison. She didn’t want to have to. She waited, her lungs weighed down and cold.

It was Huw, at last, who spoke. Huw, from whom she’d heard a scant half-dozen words since she’d met the sons of Branwen many days before. He stirred his bulk, and lifted his head, but kept his gaze on the fire when he spoke.

“Neidr,” he said. Then he fell silent again. _Snake._ A reminder.

At the sound of his voice, whatever miasma had been in the air—that made her feel like they might listen after all—resolved, all at once, and the brothers seemed to come back to themselves. There, there was the quality in the air, not just resisting, but repelling. A solid _push,_ sure, strong, and immovable. She felt it on the surface of her mind. It was over.

Crowley wanted to laugh. Huw, of all the four! _Not a simpleton,_ she recalled. She hadn’t known how true it was until he cut through her web with a single word. She sat there hiding her smile and hugging her mirth to her chest, and waited to see who would speak, now that the danger was past.

It was Gareith. “Neidr indeed,” he said mildly, and looked at her with narrowed eyes, but it was not anger in his face. He said, “I think, on balance, that we will not be kings. If these people are to be shut into a garden to be ruled over, at least it won’t be me building the walls.” An invisible ripple of agreement went around the fire at his words.

“But you’d be just rulers,” Crowley protested, if only to be thorough. “Not like this Meuric.”

“I hope I would,” Gareith answered with a laugh. “But my son, or his son, might well be an utter bastard.”

“Nothing more likely,” put in Gwilym, and Gareith laughed again, and the tension evaporated as if it had never been. _As if they had not just been tempted by the Serpent of Eden, and come through triumphant._ Astonishing.

There was a little silence. Gareith passed the bag of drink to Crowley, and everyone paused a bit for breath.

Gareith spoke up, next. “I’ll tell you what would tempt me,” he said. 

“Will you, now?” So reckless with their trust, these humans. “Having evaded the snare of the Serpent of Eden, will you now hand me the best weapon to use against you?”

“Crowley,” Emrys cut in. “However ill you would have us think of you, you are not a...a predator. Dangerous, yes, but only...only as dangerous as what is already in my heart.” To Crowley’s amazement, he _grinned_ at her. “I think—I think it is up to me, how much danger I am in, from you. The choice is mine. Ours.” 

“The choice is _mine_ ,” Gareith said. “And I choose to tell you.” He took a breath, then said, “I know the future you described will come to pass. It is not one man, nor even four brothers, who can halt it. I know. But…” he scratched blunt fingers through his wiry beard. “There must be others who are ill suited to such a world. Who would need to escape it. I would like to shelter them. To make a, a haven, however briefly, where we are not under anyone’s dominion. For myself and perhaps these children that you imagine for me. To delay the time when the whole of Britain is trussed with walls and fences, and every blade of grass belongs to a king, and the people must get their bread from the lord, and not from the land. Just for a little longer. That’s what would tempt me. Not power, but the chance to, to stay free.”

 _To stay free._ Crowley blinked, and blinked again, and tried to clear her throat without seeming to. She was aware of Emrys’ eyes upon her as she shifted, and stared, and had nothing at all to say. 

But Gareith looked at her, and pinned her with his gaze. “Well, serpent?” he said, as though he were joking, as though he did not care one way or another. But his face held a challenge _._ “Well? Can you grant me this wish of mine?”

“If I do, you will surely die.” She hadn’t known to give that warning to Eve, but she gave it to Gareith.

“We are mortal, Serpent,” he said. “We will die regardless.”

“It is not safe.” But of course safety did not tempt these men.

“It is not safety that I ask for,” he told her. “Well?”

 _Three times is enough, surely, to try to dissuade him?_ She did not want to dissuade him. She could see the future he yearned for and now she wanted desperately to give it to him. What could she do but give in? Death was certain, either way. This would eventually kill him. But it would not damn him. 

She made her choice. “There is a way,” she said. She gathered herself, and smiled, and began:

“Let me tell you about the Black Knight…”

***

They talked deep into the night, first the questions, and then the plans. Crowley’s part in the conversation dwindled as the hours passed by, until she was only half listening to them weave their future. She drowsed a little, out of habit and because it was pleasant to drowse by a fire while friends talked nearby.

She looked up to see Emrys watching her. She could not read his face. _Friends,_ she had thought, only the moment before. They were friends, weren’t they? Had she harmed them? Was she about to?

“What is it?” she asked, her voice low.

He shook himself then. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I was only thinking. How—how many things are not what they appear to be. This future you offer...it is dangerous. Hard. But I would not trade it for the castle I’d have lived in if I’d taken you up on your first offer.” His eyes glinted. “And you are the Serpent of Eden, and older than the world, and you shouldn’t care at all what people do. But I think you’re happy with this outcome.”

“Hmm.” She couldn’t really argue. She said, “I see the best and worst in people. I make it...more possible for them to achieve it, best _or_ worst.” She thought about it and added, “But it’s true that I do not...rejoice. When they choose their worst instead of their best.” _Particularly if I have grown fond of them_ , she thought, finally conceding the point to Gallius, long dead. “I offered you your worst, but you did not choose it.”

He smiled. ‘Did we pass, then?”

“To my mind, yes,” she responded. _A thousand times yes._ These were the ones who should pass, who rejected safety and power in the service of what they loved. Not the ones who sought others to dominate. Not the ones who built walls and prisons. These were the ones that she, Crowley, would always choose. These were the ones she would defend. “Yes,” she said, and even she could feel the sadness in her smile. “But I am not the judge.”

Emrys looked at her for a long while, then gave a little nod. They both turned their eyes back to the fire, and let the talk go on around them, and Emrys left her in peace, at last, with his questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even begin to explain how much trouble this chapter has given me. It's been completely rewritten about 4 times. Plus, I kept getting sidetracked with finding out [what kind of edible plants are native to Britain,](https://www.wildfooduk.com/wild-plant-guide/) and whether the Celts had dogs in the 6th Century, and [what words were used for landforms and rivers in what areas of Britain. ](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stream-name-maps-united-kingdom) My Deleted Scenes doc is almost 8000 words.  
> I know what happens in the next chapter and in the last one. What I don't know is how many chapters are between them. I WILL FINISH THIS. But it may be months between updates. Fair warning. Remember back in July when I thought I might be able to keep to a *snerk* _posting schedule_?????? Ha, those were good times.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley is a demon, and immortal. With the sons of Branwen, though, she's stepped into a different current of time. She's living with humans, and seeing their lives almost as they do. Not as the merest glint of sunlight on a rippling pond, but as something real. A perilous venture, for a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eternal thanks to [Silvergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl) for her unparalleled beta, and for the love she shows to my words whenever she reads them. Also for asking me from time to time, so sweetly, how the next chapter of Genesis is going. I hate to disappoint her, so you're definitely seeing this chapter rather sooner than you might have if I'd had to rely completely on intrinsic motivation.

Humans work on human time, which moves not in millennia but in minutes and hours. Many things can change in a year, for a human—or at least what passes as change among humans. Birth and growth and aging look like change to them. Only immortals can see the sameness of it. Humans live and build and plant their seeds, and they must do it quickly, before their time is past. For humans, even a single century is too long. 

They manage. Somehow they manage to build lives for themselves in that bright brevity. Their solace is the illusion of permanence. Only the very unfortunate live to see the destruction of what they have built.

Now, for the first time since the creation of the world, Crowley... _involved herself._ With humans, in a way she’d never attempted before. Having laid out a future for the sons of Branwen, she stayed to see it built. There was work; every day there was work, for the brothers and for Crowley. She planned and executed and maneuvered and laboured. Days passed instead of decades, as they built, and without realizing it, she knit herself into human time.

What with one thing and another, eight years passed.

***

“A bullseye!” Look, Ma! Look, I hit it!” A small boy clutched his half-sized bow, waving it in the air over his head.

His mother looked up from the leather she was working into armour and smiled. “You did indeed, Wyn, I saw it.”

“And I did as well.” A tall, broad man, with a mess of black hair and a tangled beard, strode into the yard and let his armload of logs fall to the ground. “You’ll be needing a taller bow before long.”

Even from across the clearing, Crowley saw the sunshine burst forth on the child’s face at Gareith’s approach. The boy instantly raised another arrow to his string and set himself with renewed diligence to his practice.

“Ceridwen.” Gareith brushed the dirt and bark from his hands and bent to kiss the woman where she worked. She laughed and gave him her mouth, then pushed him away. 

“I’ve got to make the most of the sunlight, my love, so clear off.”

He grinned back at her. “Ah, but when the sun goes down…” He bent and whatever he said was muffled into her neck, but it made her giggle and blush. He lay a hand on the curve of her belly where their child grew and kissed her again, before leaving her to her task. 

Crowley watched, letting her hands sit idle at her little forge. Little Wyn had been gaunt and hollow-eyed when he and his mother had first emerged from the trees to find their camp. Now he was alert and strong and gazed at Gareith with awe—more than willing to accept him as something like a father, if not a minor sort of god. Ceridwen, too, had lost her wary look, so gradually that it was hard to say when exactly it had been replaced with the joyful spark that now made a permanent home in her eyes. Now it only seemed natural to Crowley (and when had _that_ happened?) that there should be children, and dwellings, and cultivated plants in among the trees, and caves for stores to last the winter, and families who were safe and happy. She’d seen it all grow. 

Also, their goal of destabilizing the local nobility was a succeeding beautifully.

“Meuric is the most suspicious bastard we could hope for,” Emrys had laughed one day, early on. “As long as he thinks the Black Knight is one of the neighbouring kings, he’ll resist any truce or peace that tries to take hold in these lands.”

“Power breeds suspicion,” Crowley had agreed. “The others are as bad as he is.” She would have been more than ready to go and whisper in their ears if they had somehow proved to be inadequately grasping and paranoid, but it had never been necessary.

She and Emrys planted the seeds so that tales of the Black Knight curled and coiled throughout the villages, and made sure they reached the ears of the kings who would hold sway in these lands. At the same time, there was another story sent about, and this one was _not_ for the lords’ ears. It told of a band of free folk in the forest, who ate well and ruled themselves and would make space for anyone who wished to use their skills to help them. In this way, weavers and tanners and farmers, as well as archers and those skilled in woodcraft, trickled in and swelled their ranks. Now stories of the Black Knight were told across a vast territory, and their camps took on a permanent feel.

All who joined them learned the art of stealth, how to disappear into the woods or the hills or the caves, hiding their tracks. How to shoot and hunt, and take their food from the land, which no one owned. They were not kings; instead, they were free. It was not an easy life, and perhaps not wholly a safe one. But it was a good life.

Crowley considered her temptation to be wildly successful. A job well done, that was the source of her satisfaction. The round, well-fed faces and bright eyes of the children were the proof of it. She was satisfied, yes. _Proud_. Why not just say proud? Pride was allowed, for a demon. Pride in what could be done, even in human time.

She could see, now, why humans felt so absurdly safe in their little lives. Rhythm and routine were powerful sedatives. This felt like it could go on forever. 

***

Reports back to Hell were regular and brief, which seemed to suit everyone involved. Crowley had seen the back offices and their boxes of files; no sense putting a lot of work into something that no one was going to read anyway. They knew roughly where she was. That was enough.

It therefore came as a shock when she rounded a hillock to see Hastur, lounging on a rock and poking newts with a sharp stick. He was engrossed enough in his sport that he did not see the dismay she couldn’t keep off her face. She recovered quickly, of course. She knew her business.

“Lord Hastur.” She bowed politely. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“Crowley.” He tossed his stick away when he saw her, and peered at her. “You look...different.”

She’d appeared as a man the last time he’d seen her. “My hair is perhaps a little longer, my Lord Duke. Humans sometimes change their appearance in small ways.”

He narrowed his black eyes suspiciously. “Why?” he asked.

Crowley shrugged, and spread her palms. “Who can say?” She gave a smile of baffled indulgence. “They have so many little...customs.” She watched Hastur open his mouth to ask another question, and it was sure to be asinine, so she added, quickly, “Was there some service I can carry out for you today?”

“No.” He glared at her, as though she were the one who’d forced him to come.

“Ah,” she said. “So…?”

His expression became, if anything, more murderous than before. “I was sent.”

“Yes?”

His black eyes narrowed into slits. “To give you a,” he gritted his teeth, “ _commendation._ ” Another, longer, glare. “They seem to think you’ve _earned it._ ” He was almost hissing. 

Crowley was at a loss. “Well, yes, I suppose they must do.” _Ask. He’s not going to leave until he’s told you anyway._ “Is there a problem?”

“I’ll tell you what the problem is! _You_ couldn’t have won them! They’re coming from places you haven’t been in centuries! Some from places you’ve _never_ been!”

“Ah,” said Crowley, thinking quickly. “It’s working.”

“ _What’s_ working?” he demanded, outraged. “How can you claim the soul of someone you’ve never _met_?” 

How indeed. But she’d been sowing low-grade sin for centuries, sending creepers out in the world to seek out those most susceptible. Of course, many succumbed entirely on their own initiative, nothing to do with Crowley at all, but she didn’t have to admit that. She said, “I’m trying something new.”

“Something _new?_ ” 

_Oh, bless it._ Hastur hated things to be new. She hurried on. “Lord,” she said, knowing she was walking a fine line, “There are _millions_ of them, now, almost all with the same predictable desires, and no strength or thought to resist them. They are _ours._ Already ours. I have taught them to sin—” _a completely redundant exercise_ “ _—_ and so long as we keep out of their way, they’ll go on doing it, and teaching their children to do it, and their children’s children.” 

Hastur frowned. “ _Hereditary_ sin?”

“Why not? It’s working, isn’t it?” Crowley gave what she hoped was a winning smile. “I’ve even woven the concept into one or two of their religions. It’s been very productive.”

But Hastur had had enough. “Do whatever you want, _Crowley_.” His voice dripped with disdain. “Just remember who you work for.”

“That, Lord Hastur,” said Crowley, with complete honesty, “Is the one thing I have _never_ forgotten.”

He wasn’t listening. Instead, he was looking around as if he hadn’t noticed his surroundings before now. “What do you see in this place?” He sucked in an unnecessary breath. “It’s very...plain _._ ” His voice was thick with distaste. “Lots of...grass.”

“It’s not so bad,” she said, relieved to be rid of his scrutiny. “The people are as prone to sin as anywhere else, and very naive, in their way—I’ve found it quite a rich vein to mine.” 

“ _Have_ you?” Hastur’s eyes were back on her face, much to her dismay, and his smile was speculative and deeply unpleasant. “Perhaps I’ll stay awhile and look around.”

 _Fuck._ There was nothing she could say, nothing at all. She gave a weak smile. “If you think it’s worth your time, my Lord.”

“We shall see.” 

She bowed, then, and took her leave. She breathed around the leaden feeling in her stomach and had to keep from scurrying away. These human bodies were full of odd reactions. 

***

_What was Hastur up to?_

The thought would not leave her alone. Even with all the other concerns of their little band, she knew by now that she overlooked Hell only at her own great peril. She could not afford to ignore this threat. 

_Where would he be most likely to strike?_ Not in her own little domain, surely. Hiding in the wilderness and sneaking around to escape the attention of those more powerful—although sneaking itself was not a barrier to Hastur, of course; he was a true Duke of Hell in that regard. But he would not waste his time with humble folk such as these. Meuric would be a much more likely target, or some of the more powerful kings to the south and east. Arthur himself, why not? And if he did decide to go and murmur in the ears of the bigger players, the lords of this world, jockeying for control of the British Isles, why should Crowley need to worry about that? She _wanted_ those players to be sinful and outraged and paranoid. It would play directly into her hands. She could even spin it as a joint effort, between herself and Hastur, to corrupt as many of these would-be emperors as possible. Play a big enough game and they could even claim the souls of the Goth—no, they were _Saxon_ now—kings as they made their way west. It would be fine.

She couldn’t expect anything like professional courtesy from Hastur, though. There were certain obvious vulnerabilities that she could address. 

Specifically, there was a bounty on the head of the Black Knight. Anyone caught wearing the armour would be put to the sword, or hanged. Or burned at the stake—Hastur always enjoyed that. Typically the four brothers took their turns in the role of the Black Knight, but such things could no longer be left to chance. 

Crowley would need to do it herself. And doing so would be simpler as a man.

She told them her plan the next day among the trees as they unbuckled Gwilym from his armour. They blinked at her in surprise and stuttered out ill-conceived and incoherent protestations without stopping to think. She supposed she should have expected that. She had, to some degree. But honestly, Emrys was a man without even having changed his body, and no one questioned that, so she didn’t see why this should be so disconcerting to them. She fielded their questions for a while but in the end she made an exasperated noise and said, “You didn’t bat an eye when you learned I could become a _snake_. _Please_ don’t be stupid about this.”

The only objection that stuck was that it went against the grain for them, to allow her to take the risk upon herself. 

Gareith in particular wanted to argue. No, he _wanted to want_ to argue. But there was Ceridwen now, who led alongside him and steered women and men alike to keep the camp running, and who had a wee son, and whose belly was full with a new baby, and he loved them, oh, how he loved them, and beamed to see them, and went soft around them. He hated that he wanted to grab at Crowley’s offer so eagerly, so he resisted. Crowley pressed him; she could see what was going on, and she told him, him specifically, not to be such a blessed fool.

“But it is selfishness,” he agonised. “Nothing but selfishness.”

“And what would it be for you to be taken away to be hanged, for the sake of your pride, and little Wyn left again without a hero?” Crowley threw up her hands in impatience. “You have _work_ , Gareith. You are _needed_. And I, in case you’ve forgotten, am _immortal._ This is not a, a _sacrifice_. I? Sacrifice myself for a pack of humans? I’m a demon, we _invented_ selfishness. I am not doing this out of _kindness_.” She made sure to spit the word. “I do what suits me, and this makes sense. Stop this now.”

It was the mention of Wyn that did it, Crowley was certain. The objections dried up after that. Crowley made the necessary adjustments and that was that.

There was Emrys, though. Crowley didn’t know what he would say. Emrys had taken on the clothes and habits and the life of a man long before Crowley had ever met him. The brothers rarely ever bothered to say anything about it, and the shape of his body seemed to pose no barrier to him, nor did his beardless face. 

When he saw Crowley in his new guise, Emrys gave him a long, slow look. “So simple,” he said. “Just like that.”

Crowley gave an awkward shrug. “Your way worked as well as mine.”

Emrys only gave a shrug at that, and a little tilt of his head, and looked again at Crowley’s new form.

Something occurred to Crowley then that possibly he should have thought of years ago. Doubtfully, he asked, “Would you...want me to, to...change you?”

At that, Emrys’ strange look dissolved, and he burst out laughing. “No indeed! I withstood your tempting wiles once, don’t invite me to risk it again! I have made myself the man I am on my own. I am content.”

Thus, with no one having any more objections, Crowley took his turn as the Black Knight.

***

The fog and the ravens were a little over the top; even Crowley thought so. The drama of it was fun at first, but it paled quickly. The paladins expected it, though. The armour as well—Crowley knew iron plate was the height of human ingenuity in this part of the world, and they were fortunate to have it, but it was heavy and inflexible and pinched when he walked. It was dull black, though, and clanked impressively. It was all part of the mystique; the knights all knew the forms that should be followed, and Crowley knew how to play them.

This one would be no exception. He settled his helmet on his head and prepared himself.

“Er...Hello!” 

_Hello?_ That was not the usual opener, and the voice as it rang through the clearing did not match the fog and the ravens _at all_. Crowley sharpened his sight and peered through the mist until he could make out the knight who was picking his way towards him. This one was all clad in gleaming armour as if he had not just slogged through miles of fog and muddy hills to get here. How was thatpossible? Unless he had stopped just beyond the cluster of pines for a final polish, and what man-at-arms was fussy enough for that? It was hard to make out his face under all the clobber, and he seemed to have no device. He wasn’t Meuric’s man, though, that was clear, nor even Meuric’s newest rival Rheged, from the other side of the mountain. How far had this one come, then? And what had he said his name was?

The Black Knight’s “squire” (Emrys today) had stepped in to beckon the man forward, though. _Stop wondering._ Time to lower the visor.

“Ah! Hel- _lo_. Erm…”

 _Oh._ Crowley knew that voice. Too late; this was his cue.

“You have sought the Black Knight, foolish one, but you have found your death!”

It was a short interview after that. Aziraphale had his own plans, or at least Heaven did, and it had to do with the creeping spread of _order_ in the land. Lords, and kings, and High Kings, all apportioning the land between themselves, and keeping the peace. 

_Peace._ That’s what he called it. The slow advance of rigid control at the expense of the peasantry, who always suffered, everywhere. The angel called it peace. Admittedly, he looked less than confident when he said he was _fomenting peace_ , but he was certainly not about to take up Crowley's suggestion that they both bow out. 

“Well, they’d...they’d _check._ ”

Oh? Was that all? Not because lying to Heaven would be _wrong,_ per se, but because _they’d check_? Heaven certainly had all its minions well trained. Or utterly terrified. Aziraphale was a soft creature, though, perhaps he could be convinced to take an easier route. Crowley put a little twist to his voice to see if he could get in _this_ way...

“No!” Aziraphale finally seemed to realise he was falling short of the requisite level of _shocked._ Crowley watched him gather his indignation and settle it over his shoulders like that ridiculous shaggy cloak. “Absolutely not!” He sounded almost convincing. “We’re not having this conversation!”

With that, he turned his back and stormed back to his vassal. Perhaps he was trying for _rage_ , but it was more... _huff_. But he was gone, anyway. 

And that, it appeared, was that.

***

He felt Emrys’ eyes on him as they worked to dismantle his suit of armour.

“Don’t concern yourself,” he said, glowering down at his task.

“I didn’t say anything.” Emrys eased Crowley’s hands free of the gauntlets.

“You’re thinking. It’s annoying.” He couldn’t do much until his arms were free. He reached across and fiddled with the metal at his elbow.

Emrys swatted his hand away. “You said you were alone for over a hundred years before you met us.”

There really was no fooling him. But Crowley didn’t have to be gracious about it. “Yes, well done, clever you.”

“But you knew that knight.”

“Oh for— _yes._ As I said, well done, you figured it out. Get these things off my shoulders.”

Emrys worked at the pauldrons (as slowly as possible, Crowley thought). “So who was it?” Crowley just glared, but the thrice blessed man did not back down. “Another demon?”

 _Another demon_. Hastur’s pustulant, crusted leer flashed across Crowley’s memory. “Trust me,” he said. “You’d know it if you met another demon.” 

Emrys made an impatient noise. “Then what—” 

_Enough._ Crowley cut him off. “He’s an angel, Emrys. All right? He’s been here as long as I have. An angel, from Heaven. He’s my…” _Rival. Adversary. Opposite. Equal._ “He’s on the other side.” He could be all day explaining this and still not get it right.

“He’s your enemy?” Emrys glanced over to where his brothers were packing up their weapons. “The way you spoke to him, though. Gareith and Gwilym might bicker as you did with that angel.”

“ _Bicker?”_ The impudence of the man. “We did not _bicker._ ” 

Emrys gave him a swift look and did not bother to contradict him. Instead he said, “You do not appear concerned, at any rate. Is it...a problem? That Heaven knows you’re here?”

“Heaven? No, _Aziraphale_ knows we’re here.” Aziraphale, who’d once almost forgotten himself and invited a demon to share a plate of oysters. “He’s not going to just go and, and, and _tell them things._ ” 

“You seem very certain.”

“I…” He did, didn’t he. He was. He had no reason to be, so he thought about it. “He just...he wouldn’t want all that attention.” Again, how was he so sure? _Crowley_ certainly wouldn’t want the attention. He’d been told—almost as far back as the beginning—to thwart the angel, defeat him. Kill him, if possible. No doubt Aziraphale had similar instructions with regards to Crowley. Yet neither of them had ever lifted a hand against the other. Surely that was just as...embarrassing...for the angel as it was for Crowley? It wouldn’t be any easier to explain that to the Archangels than it would to the Princes of Hell. Crowley was having a hard enough time explaining it to _Emrys_. He’d avoided thinking about it up to now.

“He’s not the one we have to worry about.” he said finally. “He’ll do his...thing somewhere else, and leave us to do ours,” Crowley said at last, “and keep his head down, and let the higher-ups worry about the outcomes. It’s always worked for him before.” 

Emrys regarded Crowley oddly. “He’s a strange angel, then.”

Which, Crowley reflected, was as good an explanation as any.

***

Crowley set himself the task of seeing to the armoury. It was fiddly work, checking buckles and bowstrings, setting fletching to rights, polishing, hammering, mending. There was always something that needed to be done, but what made it the perfect task was that no one particularly enjoyed doing it. No one would disturb him here.

He preferred to brood undisturbed. Choosing a leather jerkin that needed new straps from the top of a pile of mending, he got to work.

Slicing through the worn stitches to pull the leather strapping free, he mulled over the problem. First Hastur, now Aziraphale. These hills were turning into a regular occult family reunion, and Crowley was the black sheep of both sides. He did not want either the angel or the Duke of Hell. 

This would complicate things. Hastur was nothing if not traditional. He would have no patience for the subtleties of Crowley’s approach. Organizing a peasant revolt would only interest Hastur if he could ensure that it would fail, and fail in a boisterous carnival symphony of bloodshed and death, preferably involving fire. At the very least there should be utter corruption in the souls of the rebel leaders by the end of it, or else what was the point? 

He used his blade to cut the long strip of leather with sure hands as he mulled. _Well, what is the point? Why are you here?_

Crowley questioned everything. It was his most annoying quality. He should not have been surprised that his serpent nature should speak up now, pestering him for truth. 

It was an easy answer. _To make trouble._

That had always been his purpose. Putting people in the way of sin, when they were so eager to heave themselves in its path all on their own? That hardly counted as _trouble_. The real fun, the real _test,_ was with the people who resisted, who refused that easy slide into malice and greed and sloth, or tried to. Who looked to change their world. There were always these ones, a few only. The ones who, who _strive_. 

Yes. These were where the real trouble was. 

If they fell anyway...well, they mostly did, and then Crowley was there to take the credit. Sometimes they didn’t, though. Sometimes in their striving they became something new, something Crowley couldn’t have even guessed at—even after millennia he still could not predict what they would do. 

Crowley didn’t know what became of these souls, the ones who were somehow too good for Hell but too bold for Heaven. They forged themselves into something greater, became bright, burning beacons, for all who looked upon them. And then there was nothing more for Crowley to do; he could let them spread their striving through the world like he did with sin. Could let them teach others how to be _more._

Now _that_ would be making trouble.

Crowley grinned at the thought, working his awl through the strap in his hand. He waited for his inner serpent to answer, to refute him, to mock his grandiose ideas, but it was silent. 

Whatever the Duke of Hell was up to, he would never understand this. With Hastur, if it wasn’t bleeding or burning, he wasn’t interested. In the last days before the end of the world, he would still be hacking away at human souls one at a time. Certainly, he loved to leave scorched earth and corpses in his wake, but the one soul was what mattered. The rest was collateral damage, and irrelevant; all but that one soul, to brand with his own sigil.

And the angel, what was he after? Fomenting peace, spreading law and order in the land. The souls he sought were the meek ones, the obedient ones, whom he guided with a gentle hand and the promise of comfort. His souls, too, his goals, were different from Crowley’s.

Crowley worked the stitching through the holes he had bored, securing the new strap to the jerkin. It was a job well done; brooding was often quite productive. By the time the last knot had been tied off, Crowley had quite decided not to worry about it. The angel, the Duke of Hell, and Crowley himself...their work could hardly even be said to overlap. They were all here in this time and place by coincidence only. 

They could all...coexist. Their methods were so different, their _goals_ were so different, there was little chance of their schemes interfering with Crowley’s. Unless they were striving for the same soul, and what were the chances of that?

***

“Have you seen Gwilym?” 

Crowley glanced around from his work to see that it was Gareith, coming up the path with an armload of sticks and kindling.

“Gwilym?” Ceridwen looked up from the patch she was stitching onto a hole in one of Wyn’s shirts. “No. Why?”

Having finished the repairs to the leatherwork some days previous, Crowley had moved on to replenishing their store of arrows. Brooding behind him, he’d emerged from the armoury, and was sitting alongside Ceridwen and Emrys; it had long been their habit to sit together at their work, when the tasks were sedentary. The other brothers might join them from time to time as well, if they were nearby. Gwilym hunted and trapped and roved as he wished, as did they all. It was not unusual to find him absent.

Crowley suggested that perhaps he’d only gone across the stream to check his traps, but Emrys said no, that Huw had run that line earlier in the day. 

Gareith began to lay his sticks carefully on the stack of firewood. “He’s been away a lot.” 

“Well?” said Emrys. “He knows what he’s about. We can’t keep track of everyone all the time.”

“No, but…” Gareith was troubled, Crowley could see.

So could Ceridwen. She lay down her needle. “What is it, love?”

Gareith frowned. “Probably nothing. But he’s been…” His voice trailed off. “I saw him the other day, when he’d said he was going hunting. I saw him in the woods below the mountain. He wasn’t hunting. Someone was with him, a man. Someone I didn’t recognise.”

Crowley’s hands stilled and he saw both Emrys and Ceridwen look at Gareith. This was odd indeed.

Crowley asked, carefully, “What did he look like?” 

“I couldn’t see him well,” Gareith made a frustrated face. “And I was too far away to approach. But he was tall. Very tall. He was bareheaded, and his hair was almost white.”

 _Hastur._ Crowley felt his lungs constrict around his next breath. He kept his voice very level and said, “Perhaps it’s someone who’s coming to join us.” Well, perhaps it was. No need to upset everyone for nothing.

Gareith frowned. “Then why hasn’t he said?”

“Gareith,” Ceridwen said. “What are you worried about?”

The big man hesitated. It looked wrong on him. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “He’s distant. He’s restless. Now he’s talking to strangers, and keeping it from us. And lying.”

It was all true. Gwilym was often out of camp on his own. Always with a good reason, if he were asked, but how many other times had he lied? And he _was_ restless, and impatient with the business of the camp. 

“We could ask him,” Emrys said. It was reasonable. Emrys was always so reasonable. Crowley hated it in this moment. If it was Hastur—and it might not be—but if it was, directly challenging Gwilym would push him away, ensure his fall. But how to say so without upsetting everyone about Hastur? 

“We could,” Gareith agreed, and Crowley could hear some of his own reluctance reflected in Gareith’s voice. “Let’s see how he is when he’s back in camp.”

No one said out loud that Gwilym might not tell them the truth, even if they asked. Crowley left it alone. He did not think about what he himself was keeping from his friends. 

***

But Gwilym was fine when he was in camp. Wry and laughing as always. Crowley watched him for signs of temptation, of corruption, but he was as clear-eyed as always, and the young men of the camp looked up to him. He taught them tracking and archery, and they jostled and vied for his praise. Crowley would not have thought of him as a mentor, but there he was.

And he sang. The children could tell when it was a night that Gwilym might play, and they’d nudge each other and wriggle and do their best not to get sent to bed early for some misbehaviour. When he’d rise after a meal and duck into his dwelling, the adults, too, would take notice, and watch to see if he would come back outside with his flute, or his crwth. 

Tonight he returned with the stringed wooden crwth cradled in one arm, casually—or so it seemed. As much as he might laugh and shrug and show how little he cared, the little lyre was as safe as a babe in his arms. He settled himself down by the fire and plucked a few strings, letting the notes hang clear in the air while the eager hush fell around the fire.

Crowley had grown fond of the teasing cadence Gwilym put into every song. There had always been humour in everything he did. It masked his private pain (and did it well), and was also, simply, joyful. He soon had the children clapping along to a merry tune, and their parents giggling at the cheeky lyrics. 

There came a moment when his face had turned halfway out of the firelight, and Crowley caught an expression that seemed at odds with the rousing cheer of the drinking song whose last lines had just been roared around the fire by the enthusiastic audience. Crowley peered at him a little closer, but whatever it was had vanished, if it had ever been there.

Perhaps it had, though. His next song, a ballad, began with his usual lilt, but there was...something else. Behind the melody. When he came to the refrain, he left off playing, and sang the words with a clear, strong voice, that brought a kind of grandeur to the song and allowed for no irony.

_What supports the world,_

_That it falls not into vacancy._

_Or if the world should fall,_

_On what would it fall?_

_Who would uphold it?_

_The world, how it comes again,_

_When it falls in decay,_

_Again in the enclosing circle._

_The world, how wonderful it is,_

_That it falls not at once._

_The world, how wonderful it is, That it falls not at once*._

When he sang the refrain a second time, Gareith—of all people—joined in with a rumbling harmony that blended, somehow, with Gwilym’s clear tenor. The notes faded into the darkness between verses, and the brothers shared a warm look across the fire.

 _He’s fine,_ Crowley thought, seeing that. He could not look at his brother with such love if he were planning to betray him. He listened to the resonating notes of the plucked strings and watched those blue eyes shine in the firelight as he sang. _He’s fine. It’s fine. Please, let it be fine._ He caught himself; he’d thought he’d outgrown that habit.

Crowley had chosen to sit a little apart tonight. His mind was still awhirl with questions, and he wasn’t much of a singer. He’d been listening closely, though, sitting up straighter when the unaccompanied notes of the song had soared out into the darkness beyond the light of the fire. He followed the music with his eyes, up to the stars.

Perhaps that was why the angel managed to come within a few paces of him before he saw him. Although perhaps not; Aziraphale was clumsy and bumbling when he wanted to appear unthreatening, but he was also the Principality of the Eastern Gate. If he wanted to go unseen, he could. He appeared at Crowley’s shoulder and the demon could not say when he’d arrived. 

He wasn’t looking at Crowley. Like everyone else in the circle of firelight, he kept his eyes fixed on Gwilym. Like them, he stood rapt, and a little awed, by the song and the singer.

Crowley cursed himself for his carelessness, allowing an enemy to approach unchallenged. But no, tonight Aziraphale’s armour was also gone, as was his earthly, non-flaming-but-still-very-cutty sword. His hands were hanging open at his sides as he listened to the notes of the lyre and breathed, in the night air. He was not here on the attack. 

In another moment, he pulled his eyes away from Gwilym and nodded at Crowley where he sat in the shadows. He busied himself with settling down on a stout log that may not have been there a moment before. Crowley did his best to appear as if this entire situation was entirely unremarkable. He thought longingly of the little dark lenses he’d worn in Rome; he was sure his every thought was scrawled all over his face. He tried not to think.

But Aziraphale was looking around the camp, what he could see from where he sat, and not at Crowley’s face at all. “This is quite a, an, erm, establishment.”

Crowley followed his gaze. It was dark, of course, but the light of the fire revealed a few dwellings, and many signs of industry. In the mouth of the cave, there were barrels of stores. The evening meal was long since over, but the smell of food still drifted through the camp. There were the murmured voices that come with children and bedtimes, now that the music had come to a close. This clearly was not a transient camp. “Yes,” he agreed. “We do all right.”

“ _‘We’._ ” His voice was very even, but his gaze was sharp. “You say _we_ but you’re…”

Crowley frowned. “I’m what?”

He hesitated, and lowered his voice. “You’re _leading them astray_.”

“Astray?” Crowley glared at him across the fire. “They’ve got food and protection and safety enough to raise children.”

“But they’re...well, they’re _outlaws_.”

“Oh yes? From whose laws, angel?” He gestured around with the tool in his hand. “Half this food would have been carried away by the lord if these people did not resist, and they would be forbidden to hunt in these woods. These children—” He cut himself off. “It is strength that makes the laws, not virtue.”

“ _Virtue_ ,” the angel huffed, defensive. “What do you know about virtue?”

“I know about strength unfairly wielded, angel. _”_ And wasn’t he growling already. Of course. When he pictured himself talking to the angel, he always saw himself being so...offhand. Detached. Mocking; indifferent to the fates of humans. In his mind, the angel was always impressed by this. Now that the angel was actually here, all Crowley seemed to be able to do was scowl and stutter and, and _preach._ _Pull it together, demon._

He tried again. “Did you come here to save them, then?” Oh, yes, that was better. Full of sneer and bitter sarcasm. “Save them from the evil demon? Maybe...oh! Maybe gamble for their souls?”

This seemed to shake the angel out of his self-righteous snit. Crowley watched him deflate a little. “No, I—No.” He frowned down at his hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t...I didn’t come here to pick a fight.”

That much was obvious, and Crowley let his feathers unruffle a little. He asked, cordially enough, “Why did you come here?”

“I just...just, I had to ask, when I saw you, being the Black Knight, you’ve clearly been here a long time, it was…” The angel tried, visibly, to collect himself. “I mean, really, Crowley, what _are_ you doing here? What could you possibly have to gain from being so...involved?”

 _What indeed._ Crowley regarded him in the firelight and did his best to keep his face impassive. It was one thing to admit to himself what kind of trouble he really wanted. It was quite another to let on to the angel. Sitting there in the flickering and shadows, Aziraphale only looked perplexed and beseeching. He did not look as though he were here to spy on his enemy. 

But they _were_ enemies. Crowley had to watch himself. 

“What makes you think I’m involved?” he said, almost scornful enough and only a little late. “I hardly know these people.”

Aziraphale gave him a look that was sceptical and not very angelic, but didn’t argue. “It will be terribly dangerous for them,” he said. “When the soldiers catch them. I can’t imagine that you’d care, but I can’t see how getting them killed helps your cause.”

“I’ve been the one in the armour, angel,” Crowley pointed out before he could stop himself. “Anyway,” he rallied quickly, “we’re not getting caught. No point. It’s Meuric’s damnation being sealed, and everyone like him. Not these poor bastards.” He sniffed disdainfully. “ _Get caught_. As if I’d be that careless.”

“So you’re here, what, protecting people?” Aziraphale could sneer as well, it seemed. “Very demonic. Not even winning any new souls. I can see _that_ going over well downstairs.”

This was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. He shrugged. “Believe me, there is no shortage of souls heading down there, no one’s worried about that.” That was true enough. “They told me to _make trouble_. That’s my job, trouble. Why should I not make it for Meuric and his like, who give it so freely to others?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply, but stopped himself. “But then…” and here his brow wrinkled in confusion, he really was _such_ an innocent. He said, “But then...you said they’re damned anyway—and I can’t really say I disagree with you, but that’s by the by—but why do you do it at all? Just...build them a, a settlement? With, with, _stores_ , and pigs and, and children? And let them live out their days in freedom?”

“Well?” He didn’t have to admit anything. “Not Hellish enough for you, angel?”

“Oh, it must be,” he said hastily. “If you’re involved. Only…” He frowned, deeply fretful. “Freeing the people from a tyrannical lord is more what you’d expect from my side.” 

Crowley looked at him closely. _He really believes it_.“My side knows a thing or two about rebellion, though, you have to admit. And currently,” he pointed out, “you’re squarely on the side of the tyrannical lords.”

That seemed to startle him. “Well, yes, but...people need stability...And peace.” He frowned. “It’s for the best. Erm.” 

Crowley squinted at him in the low light. There was no dissembling there; he was serious, he really meant it...or wanted to. Crowley considered him, and managed _not to_ mention the floods and the crucifixions and the heresies and the persecutions and the plagues that were all, apparently, the work of Heaven.

Instead he sniffed. “Must be ineffable, then.” He put a lot of teeth into his smile.

The angel’s face closed off then, and he drew himself up from his discouraged little slouch by the fire. “I did not come here to be mocked.” He took a breath, seemed to be steeling himself. Then he said, almost in a rush, “I, Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate, command you, demon, in the name of Heaven, to begone, back into the infernal fires whence you came, and trouble these people no more.”

Crowley stared at him, waiting for the punchline. The angel’s words were not a command; they were a _recitation._ As before an exacting headmaster. Aziraphale was _performing_. Crowley wondered who the angel thought his audience was; Crowley didn’t think it was him. 

He said, finally, “I’m not going to do that, angel.” There was a softness in his own voice that puzzled him. He was even more astonished when he added, “I’m sorry.”

The angel exhaled, long and discouraged. He seemed to sag. “It was foolish of me to come,” he said. “I don’t know what I thought—” He rose, then, and straightened the belt on his tunic. He did not meet Crowley’s eye. “I think it’s best if we...if we don’t speak of this again.”

 _We,_ Crowley thought. He was staring again, he knew. Perhaps if he stared long enough, some of this would begin to make sense. He spoke slowly. “I won’t tell anyone, angel.” His voice was still soft. “Promise.”

The angel did look up then, sharply. He gave Crowley one last stricken look, and then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, again, to [Silvergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl), and also to [antheiasilva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheiasilva/pseuds/antheiasilva) because they're two of the brainiest people I know and, like all people who are truly clever, are also kind. They also both have a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of all things medieval. Antheiasilva has the added burden of living in the same time zone as me. He responded with grace to all sorts of weird questions about 6th century Wales, and even sent me articles about whatever I needed to know, with enthusiasm and good cheer. Between the two of them, and WAY too much time spent in Internet rabbit holes, I am satisfied that I have avoided too many gross inaccuracies. In my story about an immortal demon.
> 
> Here are some notes;
> 
> The song Gwilym sings is from [Song to the Little World](http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/t56.html) (Book of Taliesin LVI) Taliesin was a Welsh poet and bard who lived at exactly the right time - roughly contemporary with the sons of Branwen. Quite a few of his songs and poems still exist, and it was a wonderful evening I spent combing through them to see if there was anything that might fit a story that was going to end with the Apocalypse not happening.
> 
> A [crwth](https://www.britannica.com/art/crwth) is a Welsh stringed instrument. From the 11th century it was played with a bow, like a violin or a cello, but before that it was plucked. 
> 
> Finally, PLATE ARMOUR DID NOT EXIST at the time indicated in the cold open of Episode 3. Those clanking suits of armour in the show are completely anachronistic. There are creative reasons why the showrunners did this, and I respect them, but it left me in a difficult spot. I would have had to change the aesthetics of the scene completely in order to have appropriate mail and leather armour such as they would have had in that place at that time. I made sure to say it was made of iron rather than steel, and suggested that it was "cutting edge" technology, but that's still fudging things by a couple of hundred years or more. It hurt, I am not going to lie. 
> 
> If you're still here after nearly six months without updates, I am so grateful and full of love. You're getting a second chapter immediately after this one, and then I have no idea how long it will be before the next one. There will be one, though. My heart is rather invested, you see.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sons of Branwen resisted temptation, all those years ago. They passed their test. They're living according to their plan, according to their dream of being free, of reserving a little space and time where there are no lords nor serfs, but only people. But Hastur has appeared, and Crowley (with thousands of years worth of reasons) mistrusts his intentions. And Aziraphale, too. He has never appeared to pose a threat to Crowley, it's true, but he belongs, utterly, to Heaven. Crowley can't allow himself to forget that the angel is his enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, [Silvergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl) and [antheiasilva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheiasilva/pseuds/antheiasilva) for being clever and generous and wonderful.

Crowley spent the next few days out of sorts and anxious. 

He made stupid mistakes with his forge, and with the metal pieces he was working. He took the steel out of the fire before it was ready, hit it too hard, quenched too fast. When the blade he was working on finally shattered under his hammer, he made a furious noise and flung his tools to the ground in a very uncharacteristic show of temper.

Of _course_ Emrys saw. He could feel his eyes upon him, but neither of them said a word. Emrys knew very well that there was something Crowley wasn’t telling him, that was making him act like a plonker. But Crowley was an immortal demon; he didn’t have to tell Emrys anything.

It was wearing on him, though. He should have told them right away, who Hastur was. He could rationalize it to himself if he wanted—Gwilym could guard his own soul better than most, it was fine, he’d know if he were falling, it probably wasn’t even Hastur—but Gwilym was their brother and he should have told them. 

Two days later, though, it was Ceridwen who came back from the woods with an odd tale. Crowley listened. There was a weight in him, like an anvil, in his throat or in his stomach, or maybe both. Dull and heavy and undeniable.

“I never saw anyone like him,” she said. “His cloak was all dishevelled and stained, and some of the holes looked like scorch marks. I spoke to him, but he just stared.”

“Did you see his eyes?” Crowley asked. He could hear how flat his own voice sounded. He knew the answer she would give.

She started in surprise. “Yes, I did. They were black, like pits, like pitch. No colour, and no white.” She looked at him keenly. “Why do you ask?”

“Yes, Crowley,” Emrys said. “You’ve been thunderous for days, and now this. You know this man.”

Ceridwen looked at him, and Gareith, and Emrys, and Emrys wasn’t the only one whose eyes saw too blessed much exactly when you didn’t want them to. But he had to tell them. Should have told them days ago. 

“I do know him,” he finally admitted, “But he is no man.” He raised his head, saw their confusion. _Nothing for it._ “That,” he clarified, “was a Duke of Hell.”

They stared. He looked back at them, but he had nothing to add. He knew how his face must look—how his _eyes_ must look. They knew how to read him; they’d been companions for nearly a decade, which for humans was a moderately long time. It felt long to Crowley too, just then. 

DId they understand? “This is the same stranger Gwilym met, and hid from us. I’m sorry, I’d hoped...I knew he was here. I’d hoped he’d cast his eye elsewhere, overlook us.”

“And now you think he hasn’t,” Ceridwen stated baldly. She always looked the truth dead on, that one.

“And now I think he hasn’t,” Crowley agreed. “He...dislikes me. I misjudged how deep it went. Or perhaps it’s nothing at all to do with me. But.” He spread his hands, shrugged helplessly. “It’s bad,” he finished.

That was all he had to say.

“What can we do?” Gareith finally asked.

Crowley knew the answer to this one, too. He would not hide it from them this time, not now that he knew Hastur was still here.

“Flee,” he said simply. “Leave the camp, find a new place. Vanish. My powers are not a match for his, and his brand of mischief is sharp and fiery.” No one moved. Had they not heard? “We need to move,” he said, more urgently. “The whole camp needs to relocate. Not just a few; everyone. We must disappear.” _And I will have to leave,_ he added silently, but that could come later. 

“Right…” Gareith looked about him, assessing, evaluating, a dozen plans already whirling away in his mind. He had no more questions—was he just going to take his word for it? Apparently yes. Clearly he felt that action was needed; he was through with talking. 

Emrys wasn’t, quite. “What about Gwilym?” he asked, and Gareith stopped short.

Crowley closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, and he still had not grown used to this helplessness, not in five thousand years. “We might yet save him. Or he might save himself. If he will come with us.”

“He’ll come,” Gareith said. “He’s our brother. Let’s get to work.”

***

They did not wait for Gwilym to return, but started the preparations right away. Ceridwen took charge, delegating tasks, making plans, packing what could be moved and burying what could not be carried. Crowley told them sternly not to expect to be back here to get anything, ever. They listened, but they still marked the places where they left things. 

_Humans and their hope._ Well, their lives were short. Some lessons took longer.

When Gwilym returned to the camp two days later, many of the dwellings had already been dismantled, and equipment and supplies lay stacked throughout the space, prepared to be loaded onto ponies when the day of departure came. He took it all in with a single tight-lipped glance, and strode off to find Gareith where he was planning supplies with Ceridwen.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

“Gwilym,” Gareith greeted him, his voice gruff. “We’re moving.”

Gwilym did not like this, and began to make it known, loudly, publicly. They had known he might question, but this was...something different. Crowley watched from a little distance away, close enough to hear Gwilym’s increasingly bold objections. Where would they go, he wanted to know. Where would be safe, if this was not? How would they travel, since Meuric’s men guarded the southern pass with sharp eyes, and Rheged now controlled the north? By now, his voice could be heard through the camp. Huw came up silently behind Emrys, and several people had paused in their work to watch, and hear. 

“This plan is ill-founded and dangerous,” he said. “It’s no plan at all.” Then, worse: “You’re not thinking straight, Gareith. I don’t know what ails you, but Ceridwen, I’d expect you at least to show some sense. _Stop_ him.”

Ceridwen drew herself up tall. “He did not choose this on his own, Gwilym,” she said, coldly. “We are not his vassals.”

“And why now?” he asked finally, changing tactics. He looked from face to face for a reply. Awkward, since Gwilym himself was the reason.

Emrys looked at Gareith to see if he would answer, but he didn’t, Emrys spoke instead. “Crowley says it is no longer safe.”

“Crowley says so, does he?” He looked from Emrys to Huw, his narrowed eyes flicking to Crowley, then past him, his contempt clearly visible. “And we’re just taking his word for it?” His voice rang out, strong, to all the folks assembled. “Is he our leader now?”

 _Ah._ Eight years together had seemed like a great deal, but it was nothing at all once the worms of Hell were eating at his reason. It shouldn’t have hurt; Crowley knew too well how powerless humans could be once they stepped off solid ground. 

“Not your leader,” he said softly, knowing it was futile. “Your friend.”

“Our _friend._ ” Gwilym looked at Crowley then, and there was nothing there of the smiling lad who had sung to them by the fire, only a few nights ago. “A serpent. From Hell. Why have we listened to him for so long, brothers?”

Emrys looked at him, and his voice was low. “Who are you listening to now, brother?”

Gwilym met his brother’s gaze with cold eyes, but he did not reply.

Gareith, finally, found his voice. “What would you have us do instead, Gwilym? With our routes through the hills closing tighter every day? Stay until the danger is clearer? Closer? Until we’re trapped?”

It was what Gwilym had been waiting for. “Stay and fight,” he said simply. “Fight, and win.” He pitched his voice to carry, to the crowd that had gathered. “We are skilled, we have weapons. We can hold these lands as well as Meuric can. Why have we agreed not to claim what could be ours?”

“That is how we live,” Emrys reminded him. “That was how we always said we’d live.”

“Yes,” Gwilym agreed, “But I think we were wrong.”

Now Gareith did speak up. “Wrong, were we?” Even now his voice was even, but Crowley could see the thunder in his face. “We made a choice, brother, do you remember? We had a choice, and we chose this. To live in freedom, and not seek power.”

“We were deceived!” Gwilym’s voice rose, almost a shriek. He made a visible effort to rein himself in, then said, more calmly, “We were deceived, brother.” Again, his words were aimed at the whole crowd. “We call ourselves free but we hide in the hills, as we ever did. We spy and sneak while Meuric and Rheged and all the kings of Wessex sit in their halls and dine at their ease. They do not need to fear discovery; they have _claimed_ their right to be there. Their _right_ ,” he repeated, and there were voices from the crowd that called out in support. “Their _right,_ which they have wrested with the strength of their swords. They will find us, sooner or later. _They_ are free. We are not.” He stopped, and took a breath, and finished. “There is no freedom without power.” 

The two brothers glared at one another. Looking around at the gathered community, Crowley saw that they’d been blind to more than Gwilym’s absences. There were people in the crowd, mostly young men, for whom this talk was not new. They were not there to hear and consider what Gwilym might say. They already knew what he would say. They were there to support him, and lend their voices. Crowley sat very still in the tense silence. _We were deceived._

Finally Emrys spoke. “Would you be a king, then?” he asked softly.

Crowley was watching Gwilym’s face closely and he saw the gleam in his eye when Emrys said _king_ , but he hid it quickly. “Sooner than I’d be a slave, brother.”

Huw took a step towards his golden-haired brother, then. Crowley could see that his eyes had filled. He reached out and grasped Gwilym’s arm. Gwilym glared at him; if it had been anyone other than Huw, this would have earned them a hard blow, Crowley could see that.

“Temptation,” Huw said to him. Reminding him of their choice, of their test from years before, when they’d chosen freedom instead of power. “Test.”

Gwilym looked at him, and his eyes were cold. “Those are not my stories, brother, or my gods. They’re not yours, either. We were tricked into giving up a life of ease, believing it was somehow wrong for us to want it. Trickery, brother.” He wrenched his arm out of the broader man’s grasp. “Trickery and fear. Fear of a foreign god. That is the only thing keeping us from taking what’s ours.”

Huw met his eye, and the brothers stared at one another. Crowley could feel the battle of wills that filled the space between their eyes. Huw would not argue, but as always, he made his words count:

“No,” he said. “Not the only thing.”

Crowley could see Gwilym’s face as it twisted with something he’d never seen there before. He tore his eyes away from his brother, then, and addressed the gathered people.

“How long are the rest of you going to let these lords choke you out of the land and the freedom that should be yours alone? Follow me, and we will rout them, Meuric, and Rheged, and anyone else who challenges us, and take these hills for our own.”

There was consternation on the faces of a great many of the folks assembled, but Crowley was not surprised to hear a ragged cheer that went up, right on cue. Gwilym (Hastur) had been thorough.

Gwilym was’t finished. He turned to the gathered crowd, where his—they must be his followers—had massed together. His eyes alight, he roared at them: “Who knows these hills better than we do?”

“No one!” They even knew the responses.

“Who can live on this land better than we can?”

“No one!” 

“Who has a better right to rule here than we do?”

“No one! No one! No one!”

“Enough!” Gareith rarely shouted. Even the most rash of the young men were accustomed to listen to him, and fell silent at his voice.

He did not look away from Gwilym as he spoke, but his words were for everyone. “My brothers and I turned away from this madness years ago, and we were right to do so. Let any who would return to it begone from this camp if they wish. We will bear them no enmity.” There was a murmur from within the crowd from the older folks and the cooler heads. Those who’d been shouting a moment before looked quite wrong-footed; they’d been ready for a dramatic scene, and felt out of place in this new calm.

“No enmity,” Gareith repeated. “You are our kin.” His eyes bore into Gwilym’s. “And always shall be.” Gwilym drew his breath to speak, then, his face contorted with rage, but Gareith cut him off. “But we cannot have this poison in our midst, and neither will we offer you any aid, any help at all, when your pride and your ambition bring you into danger and ruin. We cannot risk the whole clan in such a way. We will leave, and you will stay, and may all the gods guard you in your foolishness.”

At last, he turned to the crowd. “We leave at first light, with all who would preserve what we have worked to build.” Gareith did not look at his brother. “Make your choices and say your farewells. Go now,”

It was a clear dismissal, and many in the crowd hastened to obey. Crowley watched Gwilym and knew he would not let him have the last word in this. He spoke before many in the crowd could be gone.

“I thank you for your oath of neutrality, brother,” he sneered, his words dripping with disdain. “But I do not offer my own in return. Flee if you must, and hide in your holes. For if you try to hinder us, now or in the future, you will see what enmity is, kin or no.”

Gareith paused at that, but did not turn, and made no answer. 

***

It was a silent procession that made its way through the hills the next day. 

Gareith had been relentless the rest of the day, working, working: overseeing the packing and dismantling and loading and erasing all traces needed to move the camp. He spoke sternly and briefly and only when needed. At the end of the day, he’d disappeared into his tent with Wyn and Ceridwen and had nothing else to say to anyone. 

Emrys, of course, tried to speak with Gwilym, privately, without an audience. Crowley watched him approach, watched his face as he tried to reason with his brother, and watched him walk away soon after, shoulders slumped. 

Huw turned his gaze far away and went off into the woods with his dog. They did not see him for the rest of the day.

Crowley stayed well out of the way. There was nothing he could do that would not make things worse. He helped, rolling and tying and gathering and burying, but always at the edges, careful not to call any of the brothers’ attention to himself. He could see where this was going, at least as concerned his own place in this community, but he did not need to hasten it. 

Farewells were made all through the camp that night, with shouting or tears, with begging, beseeching, fury, or fear. Crowley could feel it all swirling, churning, settling like damp on his skin. Any other demon would have revelled in the anguish and misery that suffused the camp; no doubt Hastur was lapping it up, wherever he was. Crowley only felt dimly queasy. He, too, had disappeared into his tent early, speaking to no one. 

Now they were making their way along, in small clusters to hide their numbers and their tracks. There were fewer of them now, grim and weary. Never had the band been this subdued, in all the time they’d been together. There’d been losses, there’d been routs, there had even been deaths, in their rare skirmishes. It hadn’t mattered. They’d always held onto their spirit, their energy, their belief in...in themselves, Crowley supposed. The optimism and buoyancy had always reigned throughout their camps.

Not today. This defeat, this _betrayal_ , left them stunned. 

Crowley walked a little apart. He saw Huw keeping to his place at the flank of the caravan, his face blank. Over one shoulder was slung the leather bag that held Gwilym’s crwth. 

_He left it behind._ The clammy weight in Crowley’s belly settled, deeper and a little colder. Gwilym had not thought he would want music where he was going. Huw had taken it, though he did not play. Perhaps that was a kind of hope, to keep it for Gwilym, should he want it again. To Crowley, it did not feel like a hopeful sign.

Ceridwen fell in beside him for a time, and he could feel her casting little sidelong glances at him, but she didn’t say anything. He didn’t either, because what could he say? But he let her catch his eye once and gave her half of a sad smile, which she returned. Her presence was a comfort; she, at least, did not blame him for this. 

He’d have to leave. He shouldn’t have stayed this long in any case. He’d tested them, they’d made their choices, he could have just set them on their path and left, without staying to see if they stayed the course. He should have, instead of hanging around playing human and calling all kinds of attention—Hell’s, and Aziraphale’s—to this little band in the hills. They were already taking risks, trying to live in the spaces left between lord and serf. To think Crowley could be of any help with that was madness. Had been madness, and this is what had come of it.

***

They made it safe to the new camp, after a long journey through the hills, to where the country opened up to high downland. They’d been lucky to find it without too much wandering, but those who’d gone ahead to scout knew their business. There was less cover here, on the surface, but there were little crevices and valleys between the chalk wolds that made little hidden pockets, perfect for what they needed. They chose one, finally, less than a half-day away from a wide tidal river. It would serve. 

In those first days, Crowley worked harder than anyone. He set up, scouted trails, arranged a party to build a weir for the estuary and lay traps in the low brush. He helped dig the storage pits, chose a site for the new latrines. He wanted to see them settled. When he left.

Of course he was leaving. He’d stayed far too long. He shouldn’t have let himself get caught up, get _involved._ He’d only meant...but he was a demon. The damage was done as soon as his hand was in it. The only way he could do these people good, and not have it turn on them, was to leave as quickly as possible.

They had a new camp to set up, though, and their hearts were already sore, and they’d try to get him to stay if they knew what he was thinking. So he worked, and built.

And blessed. 

It had been thousands of years since Crowley had last blessed a human. Not since before the Flood, and he hadn’t wanted to, either; what good had he done them, after all, the ones he’d blessed? He hadn’t thought he’d ever do it again, but now he did, now he wanted to. Nothing like what he’d tried before, no blessing meant to last for generations, there wasn’t enough certainty left in him for that. But love, here, and joy there, and comfort. Health for a growing boy, and a love of music for an unborn child. Storage pots that would still have a few handfuls of peas at the bottom, when the people were hungry. It was little enough, but it was something he could give these...these friends. 

Friends. The woman in the desert, Saris, had called him friend, and she had only known him a day. A day or a decade was all the same to Crowley—both vanishingly brief—but he had lived with these people as one of them, and that was something to be honoured. He was going to leave them, and they might not see that as a gift, but it was. He could try to leave something behind for them. He was leaving them with heartache, of course, he couldn’t help that, but he could try to leave them something else as well.

At night, he had a different task: to keep watch on Gwilym and his followers, and mark their progress. A witness, perhaps, which was all that was left for him to do. As he and the angel had borne, thousands of years before, when the rains began. This was every bit as futile.

He didn’t sleep, but let his physical body lie fallow and stepped into the space that was not human space, where he could stand alone on a hillside that was somehow also not a hillside, and gaze back across the miles to where Gwilym and his band of glory-seekers were starting their new life. 

Here he could watch, and not be disturbed.

Gwilym’s band made swift progress. Infernally swift, now that Hastur was no longer hiding. They’d appropriated the site of a moderately sized hillfort, unused since ancient times, and in it they established their stronghold. It should have taken them months to refortify the old structure, to hew the beams for the roof and the planks for the floor, months of effort and craft, but they were under Hell’s mantle now, and it took them only weeks, and somehow they knew how to carve and fashion the wood, though none of them was a carpenter. They did not wonder at this, but took it as auspicious, not seeing the Duke of Hell for what he was. The armoury was full; no one seemed to ask where the weapons had come from. 

They would soon be ready to launch their bid for dominance over the lands that surrounded their keep. Morale was very high. Crowley watched them from afar and wondered if Hastur would first let them have a victory, or many victories, before their inevitable fall. Would they plunge into flames soon, or late?

Night after night, he stood on the hillside in the space where no human could come, and watched. 

***

No human could come there, but demons could, though they rarely bothered. Angels could as well. 

“Crowley.” 

He had barely time to register the soft chime in the air before Aziraphale was there and speaking his name. 

“Aziraphale.” What could he possibly want? 

He didn’t say. He drew up next to Crowley in the not-quite-corporeal space he was occupying, and followed his gaze to the far off hillfort in the mountains far beyond the downland. Everything Crowley could see there was just as visible to the angel. 

“Was this your plan all along?” the angel asked at last. “Let them think that Hell has no teeth, then reap your harvest?”

“I wish it had been,” Crowley said, defeated. “It should have been. They’d have been safer—”

“Safer?” The angel’s voice was cold; it trembled. “Why should you care if they’re safe? This is exactly what you wanted.”

“No,” said Crowley with a sigh, still watching across the miles. “It really isn’t.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” It was sarcasm, to anyone who might have been listening, but it was strangely at odds with the way the angel’s voice sounded. “I’m sure you would swoop in and save them all if you could.” He gave a laugh that sounded more nervous than mocking. “A demon, saving souls.”

“I don’t know anything about souls, Aziraphale.” It seemed a queer thing for a demon to say, once he’d said it. He should know a great deal; he was a demon. A demon with no answers at all, only questions, and more at this moment than ever. He was too worn out to lie. “I wanted to save their lives.”

“Their lives?” A little scoff. “They all die, demon.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But they can choose how they live.”

There was no answer to that. Crowley could feel the weight of a thousand eyes on him, though he knew if he looked he would only see two. There was nothing for Crowley to say to him that would make any kind of sense, so he endured the angel’s scrutiny without speaking. His eyes stayed fixed on the distant hills.

Aziraphale’s voice, when it came, was soft, a whisper. “Choice,” he said. Crowley wasn’t even sure he meant to speak aloud—thoughts and words were not as separate here. “You offered them a choice.”

“Yes. A better one than this.” Such a wave of despair washed over Crowley then, so strong that the angel _must_ feel it, here in this space. But what use was it to explain to an angel? He had offered a choice, but that was the _point_ of choice, wasn’t it? They didn’t have to choose what you offered. And now, there was nothing he could do. Not without opposing the Duke of Hell directly. He’d lost. There was no use hiding it. “He didn’t take it.”

“They’re humans, Crowley,” the angel said in the darkness, as though it were a question, or a plea. “They’re only humans.”

 _They’re only humans_. There were several million of them in the world now and many, many more to come. They were dying all the time, being damned or saved in rank upon rank every moment. Gwilym was no different. Neither was Emrys, or Ceridwen, or Wyn, or Gareith. Huw would be gone in the blink of an eye, like all of them. Crowley hadn’t _forgotten_ that, exactly. But perhaps he’d lost the long view, when he let himself live in human time. That was his mistake. He’d begun to think they mattered. 

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t say anything else.

Somehow the gaze that fell on him now was Aziraphale’s human one, just the two blue eyes, looking at him steadily. Or so Crowley thought, but he didn’t look to see. His own gaze, his own eyes, were fixed elsewhere. He felt it—in that odd, not quite physical way—when the angel reached some kind of decision...about what, Crowley could not begin to guess. 

A moment later, he vanished. Crowley felt that, too.

***

Crowley’s gaze was turned north, and west, and he did not look away from the fort across the miles. His nightly vigil did not waver until the last.

The fort was built, and the men at arms needed now to feed themselves. To be kept. They rode, with friendly words and open faces, (and horses and swords), visiting each of the villages in the little realm they had chosen for themselves. They spoke sweetly, of freedom and self-rule, and of standing up to the foreign lords who came looking to conquer, and of pride, and duty, and sacrifice. 

They rode off with full carts and saddle bags. The villagers guarded their faces until the knights rode off. 

Crowley could see the path they were on, see it sloping, smooth and wide, down into the depths of Hell. Saw each confident, arrogant step they took, each choice they made to keep going. Soon would come the final choice, the one that would send Gwilym and those who followed him down that road with no chance of return.

When one of the little villages they were ‘liberating’ began to mount resistance, behind the backs of Gwilym and his men, Crowley knew that the final choice was nigh.

He watched Hastur at work. Watched him as Gwilym “discovered” the village’s rebellion. _Treachery,_ he called it, and Gwilym was outraged, as he was meant to be. Righteousness was such a powerful tool for evil, as Crowley knew well. 

He saw them in the morning as they made to ride off to quell the rebellion in that village. The rebels were farmers, and peasants, armed only with tools, weak from hunger, and untrained. Crowley knew that would be it; there’d be no coming back from that.

That’s when he looked away. He cursed himself and his cowardice, but he looked away.

***

He distracted himself, going so far as to go out to look for flint on the downs, which he _hated,_ the dirt and the tedium of it, but it was that or go to the river to strengthen the weir, and he was cold enough as it was. It was hard, physical work, and he did it with his back and his own hands. He needed to be exhausted.

Then: “Crowley.” His name, spoken from within that other place. 

_Aziraphale._ Could he not just _stay out of it_? Today of all days? When he was out on the green downs scrabbling for rocks, alone, because he couldn’t be with the sons of Branwen on the day when their brother was...

 _Bless it._ He’d managed not to think about it for hours, and now here was some kind of disembodied, heavenly voice in his mind, bringing it all back into focus. Well, let him call. Crowley wasn’t about to answer.

“Crowley.” The call came again. There was something odd about the angel’s voice, the way it sounded. _Too bad._ “Crowley, I must...where are you?” Again, the voice sounded strange, thin. 

_Nope,_ Crowley thought, throwing a calkin into his sack with unnecessary force. _No one’s home. Sorry._ Again, he gave no answer, stretched voice notwithstanding.

But then the angel said, “Please.”

 _Please._

Crowley closed his eyes. “Here, angel,” he said. He lay down his spade and looked around.

The angel emerged onto the hillside, and he wasn’t alone. Or, no, Crowley saw with a wrench in his human chest, he _was_ alone. 

The man he bore in his arms was dead.

Crowley knew without looking that it was Gwilym, but he looked anyway. His eyes settled on the still, bloodied form, and stayed there. He waited to think something, to feel something, but there was nothing. He could only look.

“I’m sorry,” the angel said softly.

Crowley’s eyes still didn’t leave the limp bundle Aziraphale held in his arms, but he jolted a little, at that, at an angel telling a demon he was sorry. He swallowed. Wait...maybe it was his turn to speak. What had the angel said…?

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said again. “I tried to...I tried to turn him, at the last.”

Crowley blinked, heard the words, waited for them to mean something. _Oh._ He said, “But you failed.” 

“No, I—” There was a break in the angel’s voice. _Why should that be?_ “I didn’t. I didn’t fail, Crowley.”

Crowley dragged his eyes away from Gwilym’s lifeless form to look at the angel’s face. To see his eyes— _he has blue eyes—_ brimming with tears.

 _No, don’t cry._ Crowley could not keep his thoughts from scattering. “What—what do you mean? He’s dead.”

“He is dead,” Aziraphale agreed. “But he, he...at the last, he turned back. He ordered the others to stop, to turn away. Not to, not to draw.” He drew a long breath that he should not have needed. “Not to draw on the villagers. _He didn’t fall_ , Crowley.” His blue eyes were... _pleading_ , somehow. 

_Pleading for what?_ His eyes fell back to what the angel held in his arms. That was Gwilym there, and he was dead. What had he said, the angel? “Wha—? He didn’t—?” 

“He didn’t attack the village, Crowley.” The angel got the words out, all in a rush. “He made a, he made a different choice.”

Something in what the angel was saying penetrated the fog in Crowley’s all-too-human brain. “He didn’t attack. He didn’t… _oh_.” _Gwilym didn’t attack._ At the last, he chose. He _chose._ “He didn’t attack. You... _you saved him_.” He looked back up, met those eyes again. _Stared._ “You _saved_ him.”

Aziraphale stared back, his face pained, stricken. His head was shaking, only a small movement, but it kept going as they both stood stuck in their staring. Finally he said, “He’s _dead_ , Crowley.”

“But.” It was hard to say. “But not fallen.” 

“I...I don’t think so, no.”

“Wait.” Crowley’s thoughts were struggling back into some sort of order. “If they didn’t attack, then how did he…?”

“Hastur.” The angel’s voice was bleak. “He was enraged when they turned from the course he’d set for them. He…”

“He killed him?”

“No, not directly. He sent them into an ambush. Meuric’s men, I think. I think…” Aziraphale frowned. “I think he planned it that way. As a, as a contingency plan. If they turned back, at the last.”

After avoiding it all day, Crowley finally cast his gaze back across the land to the hillfort, where only days before Gwilym and his fighters had hoisted the last timbers into place to finish the roof. They’d been so proud. Those beams were burning now, with black smoke billowing up and filling the sky. Crowley took in the leaping flames with a sense of dull inevitability; of course Hastur would burn it to the ground.

“Crowley.” The angel was speaking to him again. “Will you take him?”

Crowley heard Aziraphale’s voice from close by, and of course he was close by, he was right beside him on this hillside, but he was far away as well and it took Crowley a moment to make his way back. Then another moment to understand his words.

 _Will you take him?_ The angel still held Gwilym’s body in his arms.

“I’ll…” Was the angel just going to...hand him over? “You won him.”

“Yes,” he said. Crowley waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. Which...there was something happening here that was hard to...hard to even look at, let alone put into words. Maybe the angel felt it too.

“All right.” He drew a breath. “I’ll...I’ll take him to his brothers.”

He took a step towards the angel and held out his arms. Then, for a moment, he hesitated. Had he ever touched an angel? But this was Aziraphale, and Crowley realized in that moment that he wasn’t afraid of him. Not of _this_ angel. He reached out with steady hands, and let the angel pass Gwilym’s still form into his arms. And their hands did touch, and their clothes, and he felt the angel’s warmth, and it didn’t hurt.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and then he had to work through the tightness in his throat to say any more. It didn’t help that he had no idea what to say. 

“I don’t _know_ why,” the angel said in a rush, though Crowley hadn’t asked him. “But I think...no, I’m sure this was the right thing.”

 _How are you sure? How do you know, angel?_ But they were at the edge of a precipice and with the weight of the dead son of Branwen in his arms, Crowley needed solid ground. “It must be,” he said instead. “You’re an angel.” He meant it this time.

Crowley couldn’t look at the boy in his arms, and he couldn’t look at the angel, and he didn’t know if the silence that followed his words had any meaning, or if anything did, at all, in this whole world. 

“Goodbye, angel,” he said, still not looking at him.

“Yes,” the angel said, his voice fading as his body prepared to disappear. “Goodbye, Crowley.”

And then Crowley was alone, and it was time to take Gwilym back to his brothers.

***

When Crowley returned to the camp, having stumbled the whole way from the distant wolds, the long way, using his feet, they were all there. Gareith and Ceridwen, Emrys, Huw, they were all there, even though it was getting late, and there should have been work to do. It was Huw who saw him first, lifted his head and saw him, and said nothing, only watched and waited for him to approach. 

He came to them in the fading light, and when he got there he knelt on the ground and lay the body of their brother down. He didn’t look at them and he did not get up from his knees.

“He was betrayed,” he said softly, to the ground. “The demon who drove him did not trust his resolve and laid a trap for him. When Gwilym refused at the last to commit the sin, the demon delivered him into the hands of his enemies.” He stopped, and his body sucked in a long breath that shuddered. He said, “I’m sorry.”

And then he did rise, and back away, because this was their brother and Crowley was a demon and they would not want him to stay for...for whatever came next. They’d be fools to trust him still. He took another step away, preparing a hasty retreat.

“Neidr.” It was Huw’s voice. “Stay.”

Crowley turned and met the big man’s eyes, finding there neither anger nor blame, but only grief. He was letting Crowley stay, to grieve with him. It was a gift.

***

They did not stay and stare at their dead brother for ever. Ceridwen prepared him a place in Huw’s dwelling, and the silent man lifted him in his arms—cradled him—and bore him into its shelter. Emrys followed. Gwilym would not lie alone this night.

Gareith tore his eyes away from where his brothers disappeared into the dwelling, and dragged himself back a long way to ask after the others, finally. To know if all were lost. 

“Most of them died,” Crowley told him. “A few fled. It was...they’d never seen a real battle, a mounted battle, and Meuric’s men are...well seasoned.” It would have been a massacre. “They might try to find us, if they got away alive.”

“We’ll send searchers, then,” Ceridwen said. Crowley looked at her. “They’ll be lost, and won’t know where to find us.” 

Gareith nodded, considering already how it would be done, who would go, and where, to be likeliest to find them. His grief, apparently, was set aside for the moment. His eyes flitted about, planning.

Crowley watched him, frowning. Finally, he said, “You’ll have them back?”

Gareith blinked at him. “Where else would they go?”

“But,” said Crowley. “They betrayed you.”

“They didn’t, in the end,” Gareith said. He smiled, a small, pained thing. “And they were faithful to my brother.” He thought a moment longer. “And they are our kin, as I said before.”

“We love them.” Ceridwen spoke plainly, . “Love does not simply... _end._ Not with one transgression. If they wish to come home, of course we’ll have them back.”

 _Love does not simply end._ They could afford to think so, with their fleeting human lives. 

***

Gareith, Huw, and Emrys sat by their brother’s side all that night and throughout the next day. They cleaned his body and dressed him in clothes that were not stained with blood. 

_Is this what happens when a human dies, and people loved him?_ Crowley had seen death before, certainly, and even some funerals, but more often he’d seen bodies abandoned or desecrated, or with little left to burn or bury by the end. When death comes and there is also love, there’s no call for a demon. 

He was heavy. His limbs were hard to move, and his gaze would settle on nothing in particular, as though moving, focusing, would be too onerous as task. There was nothing he could do, nothing he knew how to do, and anyway, he couldn't move. How was it that a demon and the Serpent of Eden was paralyzed by one man’s death, and yet the dead man’s own brothers could move with purpose, could wash his body and gather grave goods, and keep vigil, and build a pyre? What were these powers? Everyone was working. Everyone, somehow, knew what to do. How could they? How were there rules for this, for what you do when your brother, who’d betrayed you, is saved at the last, saved but killed, and his body lies dead inside your tent? There was food cooking; a funeral feast needed hands to make it. There were hands, making it.

Crowley watched, numbly, and had no thoughts of any use at all.

Gwilym was laid on the pyre as the sun sank down in the west. His best longbow was set across his breast, and there were other...gifts, it looked like. Crowley cast his eye over the assembled goods. There was a pin that had belonged to their mother, and hunting knife with a bone handle that Gareith had carved for his brother when they were very young.Crowley wished he hadn’t looked. Then Huw approached with a bundle cradled in his arms: Gwilym’s crwth, his little lyre, which he’d prized above all else, in its leather bag, and Crowley concentrated on taking his next breath without releasing the choked groan that sat in his throat, and without vomiting. In his mind, he saw Gwilym in the firelight that night, the night when even an angel had stopped to hear his song. 

They weren’t going to burn it, surely? What use was it to a dead man? Let Wyn have it, and learn to sing like his golden-haired uncle, and bring comfort, as Gwilym himself had, in spite of his mocking. Let Huw himself play it, and have the music speak for him. Or Emrys, or Ceridwen, or _someone_. This was a human thing, for human art, for living human music; it did not belong with the dead. What a waste, to lay it on the pyre.

He would not be there to see it burn, in any case. He was leaving, and he wasn’t going to say goodbye. If there had been a time when he might have taken his leave as he ought, it was past.

He knew that it was the coward’s choice, to leave while they were caught up with their mourning. A thing to be ashamed of. But he did not want to feel the passage of each year anymore. It was too much for him to bear, even for one more night. Even for one more hour.

In a meagre few decades there would be no one left who might reproach him for it, anyway.

Three brothers stepped forward with torches to light the pyre where the fourth brother lay. The dried bundles of sticks caught easily, and the flames began to lick and flicker and grow. Smoke began to curl and drift, and a shimmer of heat hung in the air. 

Crowley’s eyes drifted through it and away—

—and there on the hillside that was not a hillside stood the angel. No human could see him, but he was there. Adding his witness to that of all the silent humans here in the physical world, and to Crowley’s.

Perhaps he ought to be angry, or suspicious, but he saw the angel there and it felt...right.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley when he felt his eyes upon him, and nodded once, before returning his gaze to the bonfire. 

The angel was there, and the Duke of Hell was not. The people were safe, would be safer once the demon was gone from their midst. And now there would be someone else, and not only Crowley, alone, who knew of the sons of Branwen and their lives, even until the end of the world. Aziraphale would also know that Crowley had blessed them, would carry that knowledge as well, until the last days. 

When the flames of the pyre reached their highest point, Crowley bowed, unseen, to the humans who surrounded it, then turned and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost put a note about funeral practices at the end of the last chapter, and what a spoiler THAT would have been. Antheiasilva found me a very, very informative article about early medieval Welsh funeral practices. At the time when this chapter takes place, these included interments as well as cremations. Since cremations are more picturesque and symbolic, I chose that. Or rather, I wrote the cremation, and then desperately went looking for evidence that such a thing could have happened at the time.
> 
> Many hillforts were built in Britain during the Iron Age (400ish BCE). Although they were ruins and remnants by the 6th century, it wasn't uncommon for groups during the medieval centuries to appropriate them and build on their foundations.
> 
> Finally, the land where they make their new home fudges a LOT of geography, but in my mind it's on the Wales-ward end of the chalk downs where [The Uffington White Horse](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/white-horse-hill) is carved. It's where Terry Pratchett set the Tiffany Aching stories, and I love it. No one on the Internet was ready to confirm that the balls of flint to be found in the chalk might be called "calkins", or chalk children, but Sir Terry says they are, and when it comes to arcane bits of folklore from odd corners of Britain, I will take his word over the that of the entire Internet without question.
> 
> As of this chapter, this is the longest fic I've ever written. Certainly the most complex. A lot of my heart is in it. 
> 
> And it means a lot to me to hear what you think, if you have a moment.


End file.
